The Enid Blyton Society

The castle in Wonderful Time (in the 90s series) is Caldicot Castle in Monmouthshire, Wales.
If you Google image search it you can see nice pics of the big old courtyard and the tower where poor old Terry-Kane peers out

Thanks for the info, Carlotta.

No probs!

I'm not 100% sure about Dunster Castle, it wasn't ever used as an actual castle location but I did wonder for a time if one of its towers was used in Five Go Down To The Sea (90s series), as the Wreckers' Tower in the shots where you see the Wreckers' Tower above the trees with the light flashing.
Obviously it would need some digital wizardry to make it look like just the one tower above the trees, but that would be easy and they were digitally adding the light and the storm anyway!
Dunster Castle has tons of towers standing out above the woodlands so that's what made me think it might be, as the towers do look similar to the Wreckers' one, and I know they were filming the Wreckers' Cove not far off at Valley of the Rocks near Lynton, so Dunster would be nearby.
But as I say, I'm not 100%, but its certainly feasible!

Hmmm...quite interesting, Carlotta. I've never watched the 90's series, so all the info is new to me. Think it's time I branched out & gave the series a whirl.

They're all on YouTube if you do fancy watching them, I'm sure you'll love them. The period setting with the clothes and cars etc is lovely, and the scenery is really beautiful

I've got them saved as one big playlist and quite often just have them playing in the background to listen to (like an audio book) while I do housework or something.

Good idea! I shall watch them on YouTube as you suggest. Looking forward to comparing them to the 70's series!

Great, I hope you like them!
The guy that's uploaded them is called Jesse Johnson, just so you know what you're looking for.
The start and end credits have been trimmed off so each episode just goes to the next without any credits, but don't worry none of the actual filming is trimmed, when the episode ends that is literally where the end credits would start.

Cathy, thanks to your enthusiasm, I've just started watching them too! Absolutely gorgeous, and beautiful 1940s atmosphere - reminds me a lot of the old BBC series of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (minus, well, the lion, the witch and the wardrobe ).

I have to admit I initially thought (just from seeing still photos from the series) that Connal, the dog, looked too small and skinny to be a convincing Timmy, but on the screen he is quite large after all, and fits the part very well. And yes, the children are excellent, especially Jemima as George. Who knows, this may even change my relatively cool estimation of the Famous Five in general! (I always enjoyed the books as a child, but they weren't my favourites, and I never managed to get even halfway through the series before deciding I'd grown out of it.)

One thing I'm wondering, talking of locations - and it might be elsewhere in this discussion or similar ones, but I don't know where to look: which location was used for Kirrin Island/Castle? Was a model or digital editing used for the shots of the island in the distance, with an actual ruin somewhere else for the scenes that take place in and around the castle? Hoping someone more knowledgeable can enlighten me.

Very late 1940s or very early 1950s, perhaps.

Anyway, although this later FF series was never broadcast in Canada, I find these episodes a delight to watch. If nothing more, this later FF series bases its episodes closer to the times in which the books themselves were written, if not slightly later.

Courtenay wrote:Absolutely gorgeous, and beautiful 1940s atmosphere...

daanton wrote:Very late 1940s or very early 1950s, perhaps.

I remember reading somewhere that the producers of the 1990s series picked 1953 (I think that was the year, anyway!) as a guideline for costumes, props, etc.

Fair enough - I only said 1940s because that was when the earliest FF books were written, starting in 1942. But of course they make no reference to the war or anything very specific that would locate them in a particular year or even in an exact decade. Anyway, the 1953 look is very appropriate and very well done.

Off topic, I remember being so disappointed that the ITV adaptation of A Cornish Mystery was filmed in Dunster - not in Cornwall but Devon - and showed the castle clearly.

And the yarn market. And Inspector Japp buys a pasty there!

Japp wasn't the fittest of people!

So it can't have been a genuine Cornish pasty, either (unless it was made over the border).