To cheer ourselves up after enduring Peril on the Night Train Stef and I decided to watch some of the 90s Famous Five and started, naturally with Five on a Treasure Island.

I don’t know if you’ll be able to tell but Stef has watched the 90s series quite a few times more than I have.

Apologies in advance for the poor quality screenshots but I don’t actually own the DVDS so these are taken from YouTube. (Mind you, the DVDs may not be that much better?)

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[The episode opens on an old ship in a storm]

Fiona – I’d forgotten about the flashback scene.

Stef – It’s quite nice in a way for context, they do it in several episodes.

Fiona – You’re the expert.

Stef – Demons Rocks is one of them.

Fiona -The music always reminds me of the Beatrix Potter cartoons.

[Stef is mouthing along as they speak]

Stef: I’ve been to see the outside of that cottage.

[Screenshot on left, one of Stef’s photos on the right]

Fiona racking brains: Bossington?

Stef: Yes!

Stef: It’s a much gentler start. Did the George in the other one row? I mean she must have.

Fiona: Did Jemima have to take rowing lessons?

Stef: Possibly. Connal didn’t have to take barking lessons!

[In the study Frances and Quentin talk bills and having the cousins to stay]

Fiona: Every kind of science possible there.

Stef: Really hammering home the we’re skint.

Frances: I’ll do all I can to help, darling, but…

Fiona finishing her sentence: But I’m just a lowly little housewife.

Fiona to Stef: Do you know every single word? How many times have you watched these?

Stef: Too many.

[The cousins pack up and Anne has more stuffed toys than clothing]

Stef: They don’t use the Dick line about all the toys. But it’s a nice nod to it.

Fiona: I’m not saying it’s the best portrayal of Anne but it’s miles better than yesterday.

[George is in the garden and Timmy is barking repeatedly in her face]

Stef: Why are you sitting there letting him bark?

[Quentin exits his study and has to stop abruptly as George and Timmy come around the corner of the hall. He goes wild and says Timmy has to go]

Fiona: That’s an overreacting to not even tripping.

Quentin: Do you wish me to break my neck, child?

Both: YES

[Quentin storms off almost face-first into a wall and rants about the walls always being in the wrong places]

Fiona: The walls don’t move!

Fiona: Complete overreaction you’re right. She was holding his collar and he was behaving.

Stef: Here’s Alf.

Fiona: Or James?

Stef: A tenner a week?

Fiona: He said tanner. [Sixpence]

[The cousins see the island and the castle]

Fiona: For the time it was probably good CGI. Even Lord of the Rings doesn’t hold up as well it as it used to. Most of it, but just a couple of bits…

[Quentin walks through the hall saying Georgina is a difficult child and needs a good talking to… but he’s alone]

Fiona: Who was Quentin talking to??

[The next day at breakfast]

Fiona: Ugly pullover alert!

Stef: Oh that face!

[No context needed?]

[George tells the cousins that she doesn’t make friends with people unless she likes them and is surprised when Julian responds with the same]

Fiona: It’s nice they’re using actual dialogue from the book.

[Screenshot just to show off the hideous pull over to its best advantage, the breakfast screenshot really didn’t do it justice. Weirdly I quite like Anne’s cardigan, though.]

Stef: Getting rid of Timmy yesterday makes less sense than the books where it’s in the past.

Fiona: And nobody mentions [George going around all day with Timmy/Timmy boarding at Alf’s] to her mother at the post office?

Stef: I bet Frances knows.

Stef: It’s a shame they don’t do the diving bit to the wreck.

Fiona: It would be bit hard to pull off with child actors.

Fiona: There’s currents – good explanation why they can’t dive. They couldn’t exactly say that labour laws don’t allow child actors to deep dive on film.

[They visit the island on a lovely calm sunny day]

Stef: A storm comes out of nowhere

Fiona: Yeah in the time it took them to walk up.

Stef: Do they mention thunder and lightning in the book?

Fiona: It’s such TV thunder. Real thunder rumbles on and on.

Stef: Anne would be terrified where is she?

[Rewatching for screenshots and I realise you can see her in the top right of the frame, probably looking out the window]

[They say they will explore the wreck, then walk out from behind a rock in different outfits. This was legendary with me and my sister as it was probably the first time we spotted a ‘blooper’ and we went on about this magic clothes-changing rock for years.]

Stef: This must be another day as their clothes are different.

Fiona: Yes this is the magic clothes changing rock.

Fiona: I assume a scene was filmed but cut, that would have explained the rope and torches.

[Watching for screenshots, I notice that they don’t actually walk out from behind the rock, you can just make out the boys pulling the boat up the sand… so although a strange cut, not actually a blooper. Childhood, ruined.]

Stef: Julian does pick on Dick a bit more than in the book

[They climb aboard the wreck and find the captain’s cabin. Julian rattles the cupboard door for half a second. Then he flicks a pen knife in the gap for another half second and hey presto it opens.]

Fiona: “Blow, it’s locked” – you didn’t try very hard!

Fiona: And that was too easy.

Stef: How does seaweed grow? Does it take a seed? That could have got in the cupboard.

Fiona: I don’t know, that’s a hole in my knowledge.

[After failing to open the wooden box Dick and Julian squabble and have a tug of war over it]

Stef: I don’t think our Dick and Julian quite….

Fiona: Well they’ve grown up a bit.

[Knowing Stef as I do, I knew she was talking about our fan fiction versions of the characters and how they generally get on a lot better than these on screen brothers]

[Quentin flings open the window after the box lands and demands Am I to have no peace? You, sir, did you hurl this thing down here?]

Stef: No and yes.

[Quentin picks up the box and asks What is this object?]

Fiona: It’s a box, duh.

[Quentin asks where they got it from and Anne blurts out From the… the wreck.

Stef: You’re not supposed to tell him that.

[Quentin says And you, sir, showing no respect for the laws of gravity, to Julian.

Fiona: They were respecting gravity – they were harnessing it!

[Quentin tells them he is confiscating the box and describes it as A potential weapon of this sort.]

Fiona: A weapon? It’s a box.

Stef: Well if you throw it out a window at someone its a weapon.

Fiona: Well I don’t think he was throwing it at anyone. Well, maybe Dick.

[George says the box might contain a gold bar and Quentin says What a baby you are, this box is far too small…]

Stef: I don’t think he calls her a baby in the book?

[Anne says that the box could contain a map to the treasure. Quentin, sounding very condescending says My word, female intuition, eh. And possibly a brain there too?]

Fiona: Oh female intuition, eh? Urgh.

Stef: He keeps walking into walls – he needs new glasses.

[The screen goes black]

Fiona – Ad break?

Sef: No, end of episode

Fiona: I forgot this was a two-parter.

Stef: In my humble opinion they could all have been two-parters, but we take what we can get.

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As the episode was a two-parter, so will the blog be.