I have not been hugely motivated to continue watching the Darrell and the First Years show but here goes.

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The Kiss

There was no kissing at Malory Towers. Probably somewhat unrealistic as boarding school girls were not immune to crushes, but this already feels like an unnecessary padding to a fourth series that barely resembles the book already. But I haven’t watched it yet – it could be good.

Gwen’s determination to meet her new beau results in a surprising romantic encounter.

Gwen enlists Mary-Lou’s help to write a love letter to her new beau at Thackerton College, but when Mary-Lou gets in a muddle, it leads to a surprising romance.

From the description I’m guessing that Mary-Lou will be the one to have a romantic encounter. It could be kind of funny, if Mary-Lou accidentally attracts a boy’s attention when Gwen is trying so hard to do that herself.

The main plot is then, unsurprisingly about Gwen and her letters to Teddy. She is already referring to herself as his sweetheart and has trouble choosing between yours always or yours forever as her sign off. She is almost infuriatingly deluded over the situation, but her (unintentionally from Gwen, deliberate from Danya Griver) humorous delivery keeps it from becoming too much. And honestly – as silly as some of the plot in this episode is – it’s just nice to see the fourth formers!

Her first ploy is to get Mary-Lou to draw a picture of her so she can send it to Teddy and presumably let him know what he could be missing out on. I did lament the writers for giving that talent to Mary-Lou but it does come in useful occasionally and it’s nice that it’s not completely forgotten about.

“Please make sure you add my winning dimples.”

“But… you don’t have any dimples.”

“Well, it’s artistic license.”

(Sorry Gwen, I see no dimples.)

This conversation between Gwen and Mary-Lou cracked me up. Also funny was her literally dragging Mary-Lou away from her prep to help and Mary-Lou weakly crying But my woooooork… 

There is a major flaw in Gwen’s plans however, and that is that Teddy is categorically not interested. Of course instead of Ron and Mary-Lou finding a sensitive way to tell Gwen this they embark on a ridiculous scheme where Mary-Lou has Ron write a letter back from Teddy, gently letting her down.

It’s a weird letter as Ron clearly lets his own (rather sudden) feelings for Gwen get in the way. Instead of writing some excuse like I have a girlfriend he writes about how they are from different worlds. Poor Ron, as Gwen earlier said she couldn’t possibly hand her letter directly to the staff, even though she wanted him to do her a favour. She genuinely does see him as less than her.

Naturally Gwen just steam-rollers over the objections and continues to write, convinced she can persuade Teddy that she’s from his world, leaving Mary-Lou and Ron desperately trying to cover up what they’ve done. It all comes out in the end though, leaving Gwen embarrassed and upset.

It’s rare for me to feel sorry for Gwen, but I did feel bad for her standing waiting in the garden for a boy who never even got her letter.

Later Ron finds Gwen in the garden and they talk, and kiss. That’s not how I expected the episode to go from the description, but once I’d seen Ron writing his letter I could see it coming. Still not sure it entirely makes sense, though.

One side plot is Mam’zelle’s beau, and Irene’s father, who of course turn out to be the same person.

Mam’zelle brings Irene a birthday present from her father. A birthday tune, while Mamzelle herself has a new necklace. From her beau.

I can’t believe that someone as old as Mamzelle has a beau.

Harsh, Gwen!

Mam’zelle also has a tune which she is humming. From her beau. It takes Irene playing both tunes, and Jean’s help, to realise they are the same and that therefore her father is the beau, but we do get there in the end. Irene is mortified and doesn’t want the other girls to find out.

The other side-plot sadly involves the first formers. June has a trick that her brothers have taught her. It’s… humming. Everyone can hum. Humming is not a trick.

They play it on mam’zelle first and she falls for it – as Irene has stupidly told the class to take turns at humming so the sound is hard to pin down. Even so June risks taking it too far and physically drags Mam’zelle around hunting for the sound.

Somehow Mr Parker turns out to be the more competent of the two teachers and he rumbles the trick straight away when they try it on him. Mam’zelle then puts it to Darrell to punish June.

Initially Darrell and June bond, talking tricks and Darrell tells her to tidy the dorm as her punishment. That sounds like she’s been let off fairly lightly to me but June isn’t grateful. In fact she looks surprised to still be getting punished.

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The Midnight Surprise

Felicity and June’s search for adventure leads them to an amazing discovery.

When Felicity and June accidentally smash a window during tennis, they uncover an astonishing secret! Meanwhile, Alicia organises a midnight feast in the garden.

We get to see tennis being played which is nice – this might be the first time it’s been shown, actually. Tennis at malory Towers usually means the the lacrosse season is over, so we’ll see if they stick to that on TV.

Unfortunately it’s an extremely brief moment of tennis between June and Felicity, where June wildly wallops the ball for some reason and smashes a window in the school.

The school wasn’t shown in the scenes, but looking at pictures of Hartland Abbey you can see the tennis court right out front. Perhaps a bit too close (for a school) but as you’re supposed to be hitting the ball across the net and not at a 90 degree angle, it’s probably quite safe normally.

What doesn’t make sense is that they are convinced that the broken window is on the same floor as Darrell’s dorm room. None of the windows on the front of the school match Darrell’s dorm with its sloping roof (plus Darrell’s room and the corridor outside have rectangular windows, nor arched ones), so how could the tennis ball possibly have hit either of those windows?

It took me until today to realise that they digitally added towers to the school, in real life Harland Abbey is towerless!

Things get even sillier when June and Felicity explore the broom cupboard next to Darrell’s room. The cupboard is half the depth of the dorm room so clearly there’s something hidden behind it. This turns out to be a flight of stairs leading from it UP to another floor.

With a huge amount of noise that nobody (not even Gwen sleeping next door) hears the girls open the secret door and head up to this fourth floor room which is where the broken window is. It seems impossible that June, standing on the tennis court could have hit the ball four stories high and hit a window behind her – assuming they are in the tower room, which is the only place up there. Even though the room they are in is far too big to fit in the tower, and the windows still don’t match…

The room is OBVIOUSLY to do with the captain – there are lots of nautical things around but the girls take two visits before the stumble on this. They never say Oh, we must be in the tower room, or anything either, which seems strange. If the tower was known to be locked/hidden surely the girls would forever have been trying to get up there?

The secondary plot is the midnight feast the fourth formers have. I’m pretty sure in the book this is the one they have down at the pool and a couple of North Tower girls “accidentally” join them having been well-tipped off by Alicia. It then starts to pour with rain and the girls hurry inside and end up using the first form common room as it has windows. June and Felicity then join them, and later it all means big trouble for Darrell as head of form as she “let” girls from different towers and forms meet up at night.

The TV episode sort of sticks to a few of those elements. They do plan a feast at Alicia’s behest. They do have it outside (not at the pool though) and it does rain, meaning they have to dash inside. They do run into June and Felicity, and they do have guests they shouldn’t have. And Darrel does get into trouble.

Yet it’s also wildly different. It’s Fred and Ron who come along – Alicia makes a deal with them they they’ll bring fish and chips in order to join in. It’s only the four of them that actually have a feast, and there is no indoor feasting as everyone separates once they get inside.

Darrell gets into trouble – serious trouble – from Matron. She isn’t punished though, as Matron doesn’t want anyone to know that Fred and Ron were meeting the girls at night as they would get the sack for that.

And as in the books it’s June being an absolute beast.

Tell [Matron] it was your feast, or I will.

It’s fair enough if she was being blamed for nothing, but she WAS out of bed wandering around at night, so even if she’s suspected of the wrong thing, she was still in the wrong. It’s also stupid as she doesn’t seem to realise that she will still get into trouble for being out at night if she goes to say she saw Darrell too!

It doesn’t help that Darrell is silly enough to admit that they were outside at first, and when confronted with the fish and chip wrapper instead of admitting that Fred/Ron brought it for them, she lets June say that Fred and Ron were in the school.

The whole Ron/Fred thing makes what was a fairly harmless (if rule-breaking) feast into something a lot more serious.

Side notes – weirdly at times Alicia’s Canadian accent disappeared. Gwen refers to the kiss as an unfortunate incident so it doesn’t look like she and Ron are about to declare their love publically. But we may be in for a will they/won’t they which is likely to culminate in Ron losing his job if they’re found out. Also, a lot of this episode is filmed in the dark making it rather hard to see what’s going on!