I normally avoid watching or reading things out of order, but as I’m way behind on the Malory Towers on TV reviews I figured it couldn’t hurt to watch the Christmas specials while it’s seasonally appropriate.

Having seen it was specials, plural, I had thought there was one in between series 2 and 3, and another between 3 and 4, but it turns out there are two between 3 and 4. I’ve only watched series 1 and 2 so far, so I’m hoping these Christmas specials are stand-alone enough not to spoil too much of series 3 for me.

Anyway, the two episodes are The Ghost of Christmas Present and The Ghost of Christmas Past, each running for 25 minutes.

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Christmas at Malory Towers?

Without having even seen a trailer for this I can say that it’s not going to be based on anything Blyton wrote. We never had a Christmas at Malory Towers, for the obvious reason that the school is closed for the holiday.

Christmas is mentioned twice in Second Form – the girls are looking forward to the holidays but have to get through the two French plays first, and Gwen is disappointed not to have an invitation to spend the holidays with Daphne.

It is mentioned ten times in In the Fifth, as the girls are putting on the Christmas entertainment in the form of the pantomime.

Though neither year is there any mention of decorations, gifts etc. The holidays are four weeks long, however, so could start quite early in December, perhaps too early for such things.

I’m willing to let this slide, however, as I suppose it is kind of fanfictiony in a way. A “What if some of the girls had to stay at school for the Christmas holidays.” And you know how much I like a bit of fanfiction.

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The end of term, for some

Episode one opens with some of the girls singing a sort of parody of Twelve Days of Christmas. It’s the end of term and there’s a small party before the girls go home, attended by parents as well as Ron the garden boy and his gran.

The girls’ song is amusing so I have included it below:

On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love sent to me
12 lost lacrosse balls
11 full tuck boxes
10 topping team-mates
9 sleepy dormers
8 ginger beers
7 school girls swimming
6 staff a-teaching
5 perfect pranks
4 tall towers
3 French preps
2 midnight feasts
and 1 matron snoring in the san

I noticed straight away the while we had five of our main cast there (Darrell, Ellen, Irene (playing the piano) Gwen and Jean) plus the new girl Bill, there were 6 other girls behind as opposed to just making it up of the main cast. I know that Alicia left after second form, but we still have Sally and Mary-Lou.

So for one we actually have a number of extras! Not only the six other girls singing, but several relatives too – possibly the most extras we’ve seen at one time. This may have been possible as for the remainder of the episode the cast is very limited.

So the first question is – how do some of the girls end up not going home for the holidays?

First up – Gwen. Gwen’s father is there (It’s the first time that I’ve seen him, though he is in series 3). Gwen is dismayed to hear that her mother couldn’t come as things are a little complicated. Apparently it’s all explained in a letter from Mrs Lacey, which he gives Gwen. Unfortunately she doesn’t read it. Perhaps Mrs Lacey broke the news more sensitively than her husband. Gwen’s parents are – oh the scandal! – getting divorced. If that’s not bad enough, she’s to stay at Malory Towers for the holidays. I was cursing at him at this point – imaging driving all the way to your child’s school at the end of term and then leaving them there, especially after that bombshell.

Mr Lacey is obviously one of those stiff upper lip fellows, though you can see there’s at least a spark of something in his eyes. He apologises – stiffly – but also says:

Come now, don’t make a scene. Stiff upper lip and all that, what?

His parting words are Ahem. Carry on. Ahem.

Next – Darrell. Her parents are supposed to have been at the party, but are not. She discovers that they have been held up on a journey back from France, due to the weather, and Darrell, too is to stay at Malory Towers. Bill invites her to her house, as Jean and Irene are going to her anyway, but Mr Rivers has asked that she stay at school so Miss Grayling can’t go against his wishes.

As a side note Miss Grayling is back to being played by Jennifer Wigmore as opposed to Birgitte Solem, who played her in series 2 and 3.

Anyway, we now have two girls who have to stay at school for the hols, though Gwen tells Darrell that she is mistaken, and that she (Gwen) is going home after all.

The other girls go off to the station and Miss Grayling and Matron go off to collect the Christmas food (I hope they’ve budgeted for enough for two unexpected girls!) Matron’s face at the thought of all that food is a hoot. There are no staff left – presumably they’ve all gone off to see their own families.

Two girls aren’t enough to carry a whole episode so the train has left Porthmallory without three girls… Ellen, Sally and Mary-Lou. Ellen, feeling bad for Darrell having to stay (and not really looking forward to the hols with her aunt) decided to head back. Sally and Mary-Lou go looking for her and accidentally miss the train. There are no more trains before Christmas (implying this is more like the 23rd or 24th of December), but it’s only an hour’s walk back to the school, no big deal. (Of course I was thinking that there’d be a panic at the other end when the three of them weren’t there to be collected).

This isn’t what I was imagining, I has though that bad weather would have prevented the last few girls leaving on the bus for the station, or the bus would have broken down, stopping them catching the train (the last few of course being Darrell and some of her classmates.)

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Ghostly happenings

Now we’ve got rid of most of the girls and all the adults it’s time for the promised ghost.

Darrell thinks she’s in the building alone (she doesn’t know that Gwen is around too) and a door opens seemingly by itself. I know this is for children but I honestly found it quite  spooky and maybe not something I should have watched at night when everyone else was in bed. (I don’t do horror movies for obvious reasons.)

Darrell, being Darrell, grabs a broom and wields it defensively. We see Gwen, alone, up in the attic room, so she can’t have opened the door downstairs. (I’m not sure what Gwen’s plan was – to hide in the attic and live off the hampers hidden up there, in order to save face? Doesn’t she know that Matron and Miss Grayling would kick up a fuss if she disappeared?)

Up in the dorm Darrell (still wielding her broom) finds the window wide open – again, not Gwen. (I’m getting spooked rewatching this at 7pm as I’m home alone… and I KNOW what’s about to happen).

The dorm door bursts open and… in spills Ellen, Sally and Mary-Lou (who somehow managed to silently climb the stairs and come along the hallway). Darrell’s very glad to see them.

They head back downstairs for a little music and fun, which Gwen discovers. Briefly, Gwen IS the ghost as she turns out the lights on the girls then hides, not very well.

As Matron and Miss Graying have not yet returned (more on them later) the girls go in search of food. Foolishly (by horror movie standards anyway) they split up. Mary-Lou chooses to stay in the study by the phone, and jams a chair under the door handle.

Darrell and Sally find their dorm-room window is open, again. But Darrell securely shut it earlier. Seems like we have a ghost who enjoys a bit of fresh air.

Meanwhile, Mary-Lou remembers Gwen’s hamper and ventures out, too late to catch up with the others. Bravely she heads upstairs and gets a fright when she discovers Gwen. Her scream brings the others running. Darrell still has her broom, though what good a broom is against the supernatural, I don’t know. Mind you, her previous experience of a ‘ghost’ at Malory Towers was flesh-and-blood fellow first former Emily, and I think that we can safely assume that this ghost is similarly alive, though probably not a first former. So the broom is actually rather sensible.

Quote of the episode has to go to Gwen for:

You’re such a hooligan, Darrell.

Though it was Sally who threw the blanket over her and drove her to the ground, and Darrell didn’t hit her with the broom at all.

Gwen continues the lies, telling them that there was a flood at her parents’ house and she will be joining them soon. She even lets the others believe that she was hiding so she could be greedy and didn’t have to share her hamper. Mary-Lou saw the letter, though she didn’t have time to read much of it so I’m not sure how much of the truth she knows.

She at least admits to turning the lights off, but she didn’t open the windows or do any of the humming that Darrell has heard. There’s a brief ‘why should we believe you’ moment, but a far-off clatter and singing proves there’s someone else around. Darrell says it’ll be OK as they are all together.

But as Ellen says, most ominously:

Someone, or something is in here with us…

Dun dun dun.

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Miss Grayling and Matron

So what has kept these two away from the school? Only a broken-down car.

They’re on their way back with the food – Miss Grayling driving – when the engine goes.

Impressively Matron knows her way round a broken fan belt as she drove ambulances in the war. She always carries a stocking substitute (I assume primarily for her legs, as she probably doesn’t have much use for fan belts on the average day at work) and they are good to go again.

Until the stocking also breaks – Matron must buy cheap ones. By now the wind has picked up as a storm blows in and it’s too dangerous to walk the cliff path back to the school. All they can do is call from the phone box and give half a message before the line goes dead.

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Bill and the others

We also get one tiny scene at Bill’s stable. They look across the cliffs and see Malory Towers, its Christmas lights ablaze. She says that the school is only an hour away on horseback.

I was wondering about the purpose of this scene, but later I had the sudden image of the girls spelling out SOS or flashing morse code with the lights, and Bill riding to the rescue on Thunder. How likely is that, though?

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What do I think is going on?

Usually I have no clue, but this time I think I might have worked it out. I could be very wrong of course.

I think it’s Ron’s great granny Mary.

Who, you ask?

Well, at the beginning, in what seemed like an unimportant one-minute scene, we see Ron, his little brother, and his great granny at the party.

My reasonings are as follows:

1. There must be a reason to have included two new characters.
2. She is established as being confused – she doesn’t recognise that the girls were parodying the Twelve Days song, and thought they were just getting the words wrong.
3. The ghost is humming and singing the Twelve Days song
4. When Ron leaves the party he says that his great granny and brother must have already left but we don’t see them go
5. Great granny used to live at Malory Towers as Miss Grayling’s nursemaid – so she would know her way around. And she might even open the upstairs windows if that had been her quarters or the nursery.

But we’ll see! Those could all be red herrings.

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A few last points

Although I wasn’t sure, upon checking, Mrs Lacey’s voice (as she reads the start of her letter out) was provided by Naomi Sheldon, and she is back again in series 4 as Mrs Lacey. I was worried that by getting Mr Lacey instead that either the character was finished with, or the actress wasn’t coming back.

There was a reference to Ellen having moved up a class, which must have happened during series 3.

The mince pies Darrell is handing out at the party are are huge.

And lastly, I found it funny how ominous Darrell sounded when she said

We’ll have to be each other’s family tonight.

Ok, one more lastly:

What exactly this ornament??

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My thoughts

I actually thought this was pretty good! I think not having it based on any book material is actually a good thing as then there’s no room for complaint about them straying from the plots.

If I had to nitpick:

The girls being stranded at the school without the staff is a little contrived – but at least they mostly had different reasons to be there. And these things are necessary to have the story at all.

The ghost plot has been done before with Emily, but this is much spookier. With Emily there was the legend of Lady Malory, which was clearly Alicia stuffing up the girls, and at all times the school was full of other people. The girls being alone with a storm raging outside is actually very atmospheric.

Over all this was intriguing and spooky, with just enough Christmas to make it festive and I’m looking forward to part 2 to see if I’m right about the ghost.