The Enid Blyton Society

The thing is, it'd be impossible nowadays to set the Famous Five in the present and have them be anything like the original stories at all, really. The 1970s were different in many ways from the '50s, but the basic plots could still be transferred to a contemporary setting and work pretty well. Now that we have computers, smartphones, the internet, social media and all the rest, the world that children (and grown-ups!) live in today is almost unrecognisable compared even to the '70s, let alone to Enid's era!

I agree

I think that the last possible decade to make a contemporary film or tv series of the FF was the 1970s. Even watching a repeat of "The Sweeney" yesterday highlighted how much times had changed. I refer to the "Flying Squad" having to ask a householder whether they could use her phone. The fact that they were trying to arrest her husband gives an insight into how difficult their lack of communications must have been.

Courtenay wrote:The thing is, it'd be impossible nowadays to set the Famous Five in the present and have them be anything like the original stories at all, really. The 1970s were different in many ways from the '50s, but the basic plots could still be transferred to a contemporary setting and work pretty well. Now that we have computers, smartphones, the internet, social media and all the rest, the world that children (and grown-ups!) live in today is almost unrecognizable compared even to the '70s, let alone to Enid's era!

Courtney, if Harry Potter can be made, I am sure this can be done too.
I think I can certainly live without my mobile phone if I had to go out and do all the stuff famous five do.I live without Facebook, it works out. It is not impossible certainly, and why should 12 or 13 year olds have mobiles?

Technology is just an extension to real life it can never replace it. I read this from Pew's research on Teenagers of 21st century.

I think, the settings of 1990's is so more appealing that even today if I see children going about like this, it would never seem like ,I visited the 1940's.
If we have the right cast, the right place and the right people working behind scenes, we can certainly make a super successful movie.

I haven't read the Famous Five books for some time but the whole of the Adventure series was made as present day pieces in the 1990s so it would probably not be impossible. Plus, as others have said, many modern day kids shows don't show the children using mobile phones or modern technology.

I would say though that as the Famous Five books have been adapted so many times before, it would be much more interesting if another series of books was attempted.

I think it's not so much the fact that children need to be shown using modern technology - obviously a film maker can totally ignore the tech and just dramatise something without mobile phones, computers, tablets etc - but in an average Famous Five, if we are to assume most kids of 12 or 13 have a mobile phone, plots would seem a bit far fetched if they were tied up in caves etc and didn't 1) have the phone confiscated by the baddies or b) use a mobile phone (and tracking systems!) to show parents/police their whereabouts.

If a group of children found piles of treasure in a cave these days they would take photos on their phones, email them to parents or text a photo in a message. They would phone the police before anyone got tied up or kidnapped, and they certainly wouldn't witness lights being flashed by way of a signal, because the baddies would simply contact each other on mobile phones, so the children would never even discover that anything was going on!

Robert Houghton wrote: If a group of children found piles of treasure in a cave these days they would take photos on their phones, email them to parents or text a photo in a message. They would phone the police before anyone got tied up or kidnapped, and they certainly wouldn't witness lights being flashed by way of a signal, because the baddies would simply contact each other on mobile phones, so the children would never even discover that anything was going on!

Isn't modern life boring?!

It is to us living in a Blyton world. I can't imagine a life without flashing lights at night, secret passages and treasure maps.

Jennifer Thanisch is my firm favourite from the 1970s series. The Anne from the 1990s series didn't really cut it for me, although she was probably closer in age to the Anne of the books. I don't really have a favourite from the 1990s series, but certainly Jemima Rooper was top-class as George.

Courtenay wrote:

Robert Houghton wrote: If a group of children found piles of treasure in a cave these days they would take photos on their phones, email them to parents or text a photo in a message. They would phone the police before anyone got tied up or kidnapped, and they certainly wouldn't witness lights being flashed by way of a signal, because the baddies would simply contact each other on mobile phones, so the children would never even discover that anything was going on!

Isn't modern life boring?!

Yep . Utterly utterly boring, I can't even begin to imagine an Enid Blyton book set in the modern day, I wouldn't want to in all honesty, and it wouldn't work. For me, their whole appeal is that their set in better, nicer, quieter times.

Part of the timeless appeal of the books is their setting in a simpler era where the children had toi rely on their own wits and ingenuity to succeed at their adventures rather than simply hauling out some piece of technology and letting that do the work instead.

I think that as it has been so long since any English adaptation, that any new TV would be welcome...

It is weird looking back to think that across the 1990s about 50 Blyton books (if not more) were adapted for TV and yet there has been so little since then. I guess similar in some respects to the fact that there were no successful Sherlock Holmes adaptations for years and then 4 have recently come along at once...

Half of me thinks it would be great to have a new EB series on TV, while the other half of me is saying 'NO!!' because I'm sure it would be awful. The 1970's and 90's Famous Fives were okay in their way, and I liked them both, but sometimes the villains, in particular, were handled as comedy villains, which I hated. Plus, I never watched a Famous Five without groaning at how much the story had been butchered compared to the book, or how a setting/situation/character was different to how I imagined it. I feel the same about most TV adaptations - especially my favourite Daphne DuMaurier book, 'Rebecca' - which has never been filmed properly in my opinion!

IF something was to be filmed and filmed well, I think The Five Find Outers would make an excellent series - but how difficult it would be to film so that it pleased every reader!

I think. in the end, like Enid, I'd rather watch each story play out on 'my own cinema screen' in my head, rather than on TV!

Perhaps you should try the St Clare's anime series, Robert. They made 26 episodes à 25 minutes of it.

Wolfgang wrote:Perhaps you should try the St Clare's anime series, Robert. They made 26 episodes à 25 minutes of it.

That's more like it!

I would certainly love to see a well crafted adaptation of, say, the Barney Mysteries, with each book being covered in perhaps 2 or 3 parts of an hour long - slow burning and detailed, rather than just half an hour for a whole book!