Stef was up visiting me so we thought we’d subject ourselves to the new Famous Five adaptation. Neither of us had seen it before. This would probably have made an interesting livestream but as neither of us have had any desire to record ourselves, ever, I just typed notes on what we said throughout.
In an attempt to avoid my usual thing of summarising the entire episode I am going to try to stick to what we said, with occasional context, based on the extremely hurried notes I typed while we talked.
I warn you now – we had a LOT of questions, and very few answers.
Here be spoilers!
[The opening credits, with synth music plays.]
Fiona: Why do I feel like I’m in the 80s?
Stef: Is the plan for this to be a slightly modernised mix? Looks lovely, though. Germany maybe?
Fiona: Yeah, very nice but not my idea of Kirrin Beach. It’s too narrow and rocky. You couldn’t dig holes in the sand to sit in there.
Fiona: George’s boat has a sail. Funny how it never had a sail in the books, until which one was it? Wonderful Time when they’re going to Red’s place and it has one.
Fiona: Oh, we have a mystery boat. Hang on, no Timmy yet? Is she going to rescue him somewhere? She doesn’t have him yet?
Fiona: She’s wearing converse? (I’ve done some research since and there were shoes like this in the 30s -I’ve found Keds from America with a similar look (for boys, of course) but I haven’t seen anything UK-based. I imagine these would also be quite expensive even if they aren’t totally anachronistic. Thing is, though, if you’re trying to portray a particular time period often it’s safer to not include perfectly accurate details if they’re going to be mistaken for too modern.)
Stef: Well, she’s wearing jeans on the promo picture.
Fiona: I was going to ask how she knows he’s Timmy but it’s on his collar.
Stef: Definitely more a Connal than a Toddy
Fiona: And not like the books. But more important he can act than matches.
[Timmy sounds like he almost talks]
Both: Laughing
[Uncle Quentin tells George to be nice, or, If you can’t be nice pretend to be nice.]
Both: Laughing
[Anne says Careful with my luggage, don’t drop it. DON’T put it on the ground! to Julian and Aunt Fanny.]
Stef: Bossy much? That’s not Anne. So far Julian is the only one who could be called like the books.
Fiona (Sarcastically): Oh no!! Tubing!!
Stef: A diving suit. Though it actually looks like a body.
[The cousins meet and George asks them if they want to see a dead body.]
Fiona (Sarcastically, again): Well this is going well. Not very Famous-Five-ish is it?
Stef: At least Julian’s being responsible… I bet Timmy has a secret in his collar.
Stef: He looks like a nazi.
Fiona: Very Adventure/Secret TV series, cutting away to bad guys with binoculars etc. The books never showed us the baddies on their own. (I realise now that the Famous Five 90s Series did this at least to a certain degree, though.)
[Mr Boswell has gone to report to his boss, Mr Wentworth.]
Fiona: OMG how pantomime.
Fiona: OMG it IS actually a dead body? (I had sort of thought it might just have been an empty diving suit, as you never find dead bodies in an Enid Blyton adventure!)
Fiona: So it is supposed to be set in Dorset.
Stef: Dick is not that timid.
Fiona: I think they’ve made him the geeky brain box
Stef: Not that he wasn’t always smart – but he was the comic relief.
Stef: Why do they say the island is cursed? – Because it is?
Fiona: Are the ancient Knights Templar really a way to modernise and make it appeal?
Stef: So they’ve swapped… Anne is the sassy one, Dick is the scared one, and Julian is the only one like his character.
Stef: This might just be the boys’ heights but Julian –
Both: Looks a lot older. (We Googled but there’s a lack of info on the cast out there.)
Stef: Where the flip is the castle… oh, there…
Fiona: Not a sandy inlet, but I suppose the geography can’t always match.
Fiona: Why is he carrying her?
[Anne moans about being hungry, asking are we there yet?]
Fiona: Why is she turning into Dick? OMG she’s a pampered princess. Julian in the book would not have stood for that.
Stef: I really don’t like this adaptation of Anne. She has to do some major changing.
Fiona: I can see them wanting to give a personality other than just scared homemaker but they didn’t have to make her annoying.
Stef (correcting me): A brat
Stef: George and Julian look significantly older than Dick and Anne, but George not quite as old as Julian.
Stef: What? He’s carrying great big chunk of rope.
Fiona: But, I mean, it’s not round his waist.
Stef: That might be later. Oh so the pampered princess decided she was going down.
Fiona: Julian would have sent Dick down first.
Stef: Who’s going to lower Julian down? Or Julian would have gone first.
Stef: The mushroom thing… There’s being clever and there’s being… obnoxious.
Fiona: Not just brainy but geeky.
Fiona: Has he gone in with his shoes on?
Stef: I think they all have!
Fiona: Wet and soggy socks and shoes. That’s not a brainy idea, tasting it. You don’t just drink water that could be stagnant…Why do I feel like there’s going to be a giant booby trap?
Stef: Indiana Jones style.
Fiona: You’re not going to need Mr Roland to translate the Latin.
Stef: To be fair in Adventuring Again Dick and Julian are learning Latin.
Fiona: GEORGE DROP IT!!!
Fiona: It’s the holy grail and here comes the booby trap.
Stef: What’s the dog going to do?
Both: UHOH.
Stef (laughing loudly): Not once did Anne ever say I think we’re going to die.
Fiona: Usually these things are not easily reset as they want to trap you and kill you.
Stef: Ah cool, four dead children then. Presumably this works as there’s four of them and adults would have gone alone?
Fiona: Mhmm… It’s a flipping slip and slide!
Stef: Laughing (possibly more at me than the episode)… He’s still got his rucksack on! Hope it’s a waterproof bag.
[Back at Kirrin Cottage they examine what’s on the chalice.]
Fiona: I don’t think that needed a magnifying glass.
Stef: Anne stop being not Anne!
[Mr Boswell comes to talk to Uncle Q about buying the island.]
Fiona: Julian’s so grown up he gets given a business card.
Stef: Well, he shook hands. What’s the tattoo on the wrist mean?
Fiona: It’s a shame – they don’t seen to be lighting Aunt Fanny well. She has darker skin and you couldn’t see her well sitting on the sofa – but maybe it was intentional to have her in the background?
Stef: It was the same in an earlier scene.
[We had to pause the episode to discuss this – however on rewatching on my laptop it seems better, so it may have been partly the colour balance/brightness settings on my TV]
[One of the baddies says don’t underestimate children.]
Fiona: Certainly not these children.
Stef: I’m not keen on this soft focus they’re using. (This turned out to be terrible for taking screenshots too!)
Fiona: There is a lot of it. I’m also not really interested in the baddie’s masochistic ramblings.
Stef: How come Timmy is somehow inside the house? (Uncle Q and Aunt F are against keeping Timmy and before now he has been kept in George’s den/shed.)
[The other three disagree with Julian strongly, and all end up travelling to a church in London.]
Stef: They’re all against him. Which is strange – especially in the first book they never gang up on Julian.
Fiona: How are they going to get into this guy’s tomb?
Stef: That’s not London it’s Gloucester. Those are the Gloucester cloisters.
Fiona: Is this where some of Harry Potter was filmed?
Stef: Yep.
Fiona: How did they get Timmy in the church?
Stef: Maybe the tomb is downstairs.
Fiona: Maybe the key is the key.
[Mr Wentworth approaches them dressed as a priest, and asks them where they found the goblet. George answers “What is it to do with you?”]
Fiona: They would never be that outright rude to an adult.
Stef: That is a Catholic priest and they are in a Protestant place.
Stef: Idiot children!
Fiona: Never follow the creepy priest underground!
Fiona: Those are not priest shoes!
[They find a hidden button in wall, press it and a secret passage appears.]
Stef: Now the whole of the Gloucester Cathedral is going to know that things are moving. Gordon Bennet!
Fiona: Totally Indiana Jones again. Just need all the insects. Is he going to shut them in?
Stef: Probably.
Stef: Julian would not do that. They’d all go or none of them. EURGH spider webs. He IS going to shut them in.
Fiona: It’s going to be the classic give me the thing! No, let us out, then we’ll give you the thing. No, give me the thing and then I’ll let you out. Then he won’t let them out.
Stef: I suppose, send the children in then take what they find is a normal trope.
Stef: Dick’s noticed the tattoo.
Stef: So, Julian is strong enough to move a marble slab on his own?
Fiona: I think taking the sword really does count as theft.
Stef: I reckon it’s the gem which isn’t dusty at all.
[Fake priest holds Dick hostage and demands the others hand over the sword.]
Stef: Kick ’em, Dick!!
Fiona: This is not our Dick though…
Stef: They’re going to lock them in now.
Stef (derisively to the Five): What did you think was going to happen?
Fiona: Of course there will be another way out. There’s always another way out.
Stef: Jack Gleeson was on Game of Thrones and from what I can tell his character there was the exact same as the moron he’s playing now.
Stef: I’m sorry but Transport for London would have blocked that off!
Fiona: Oh so we don’t actually get to see them risking their lives jumping onto the tracks. (On reflection this is probably to stop it looking like they are encouraging children to do the same.)
Stef: Interesting that they were close enough to go to Julian’s home.
Stef: Is this pre WW2? That thing on the telly would suggest so.
Fiona: But how many people had TVs pre WW2? (Apparently the answer is 20,000 and all in the South of England as the BBC didn’t transmit to the Midlands until 1948, Northern England in 1951 and Scotland in 1952. Shocking, if getting very off-topic.)
Fiona: Ooh they’re trying to explain it! (It being the two families not having contact, which turns out to be that Quentin and Jack had a sister who died.)
Stef: None of them have had a bath!
Fiona: Where are the grown ups?
Stef: Surely there’d have been even a maid.
[Mr Wentworth’s house again.]
Stef: What does he look like?
Fiona: I don’t even know!
[The butler brings out a silver tray of identical sunglasses]
Both: What??
[The Five ‘sneak’ across a wide open driveway by ducking.]
Fiona: You’re not INVISIBLE!!
Stef: My brain hurts.
Fiona: This is like breaking and entering at this point.
Stef: Fair’s fair – they do it in the books, when the go after Dick that’s fairly breaking and entering, Red Tower’s, its ok because they are bad guys.
Fiona: I think it’s different if you’re rescuing people.
Stef: They break into the artists’ bedrooms.
Fiona: They follow a secret passage and find themselves there, plus they knew they’d stolen stuff.
[The Five are on a mezzanine /balcony indoors while there are people on the floor below.]
Stef: It’s a bannister!
Fiona: It’s see through!
[The bad guy sets up the sword to shine a light through the gem, in front of an audience.]
Fiona: Now I see why the sunglasses were needed. This is indiana jones again with the sun shining on the map.
[Julian declares this is total madness.]
Stef: I’m with Julian on this one.
Fiona: It’s the outline of kirrin island?
[The Five are caught by Mr Wentworth.]
Stef: You’ve not even asked them how they got out of the crypt!
Fiona: Does you you actually know [where the treasure is]?
Stef: It’s the creepy little moustache.
Fiona: This seems like a lot of people to let into your secret.
[Julian says That guy’s completely insane.]
Fiona (sarcastically): I mean what gave you that clue?
[Mr Wentworth’s mother brings them a trolley of food.]
Fiona This is the first time we’ve seen them get fed. Look at those cakes – so bad and garish.
Fiona: Look at her [George’s] blouse, it was filthy earlier, across the shoulders now it’s clean.
[Mr Wentworth sits cross legged, eyes shut, oblivious to the Five creeping about.]
Fiona: He is much better at meditating than I am.
Fiona: Oh look, she [George] is dirty again now!
[Somehow we lose the ability to form coherent sentences around the time that George pulls the sword from its block of stone.]
Stef: Go and help her!
Fiona: I hope that’s not sharp.
Stef: Why is he not [responding, I probably meant]… is he pretending?
Fiona: Just stab him!
[Julian tosses a load of golf balls on the floor and Mr Boswell slips on them, groaning ‘balls’].
Fiona: Balls!?
Fiona: Timmy hasn’t covered himself in glory yet.
[Mr Wentworth calls out Professor Bernard, Mrs Bernard as they suddenly arrive – and the captions back this up. IMDB has them as Barnards, however. Also look how clean George is. The boys are grubby but not as filthy as earlier.]
Stef: Is that Aunt Fanny and Uncle Quentin he means?
Fiona: Bernards? Not even Barnards! How does Kirrin everything belong to Uncle Q if he’s a Barnard? They had ample opportunity to solve it and make it not confusing and they messed it up.
[We discuss this, at far too much length to have typed out. Upshot is, it doesn’t make much sense. They could have had Quentin Kirrin and his sister who marries Mr Barnard/Bernard. They could have had Quentin and Jack Kirrin… They could have left out Quentin’s family having owned Kirrin forever…]
Fiona: Julian’s shirt – the white patch is back, it wasn’t in last scene.
Stef: Her [Mrs Wentworth] dress is ripped under the arm – look.
Fiona: Why is he [Uncle Quentin] sporting bride of Frankenstein hair?
Stef: Nutty professor?
Fiona at 67 minutes in: Can I draw your attention back to what happened to the dead body on the beach?
Stef: No policeman involved in how or why he died? Even the incompetent Goon manages to get in the way of adventures. Not that the police did much more than arrive at the end to take the baddies away, the only other one I remember is the dismissive one from Hike.
Fiona: They do come in Fall Into Adventure to investigate the break in.
Fiona: Makes me think, it didn’t need to be a body just a helmet or something weird rather than a body forgotten about.
[Quentin tells George more about her late Aunt Annie and her explorations of Kirrin Island, which led to her death.]
Stef: You’ve just given George the answer!
Fiona: Yep.
Fiona: George has to be a bit inconsiderate to go and take the exact same risk.
Fiona: Their bodies were found? Whose?
Stef: The police searchers.
Fiona: But not Annie’s?
Stef: Is she the baddie’s mum?
Fiona: That’s what I was thinking but that’d be weird.
Fiona: You’d think he’d [Uncle Q] not have not allowed her to go [to the island, where her Aunt died] in the first place, not allowed her a boat.
Stef: What’s she going to do?
[The baddies are blasting with dynamite on the island.]
Fiona: Not very discreet is it?
[They find another passage in a cove.]
Fiona: Julian would never be the last one in.
Fiona: Do they not have clean clothes?? Even the 90s kids changed their clothes.
Stef: Yeah, Marco had like ten different pullovers.
Fiona: Sometimes they changed outfits just by walking behind a rock.
Stef: For a change Anne is not being a wimp.
Stef: Timmy knows, that’s where his diving person went, presumably.
Fiona: If it’s that dangerous to divers what chance do children have?
Stef: George knows the tides.
Fiona: But he had a diving suit on!
Fiona: Mushroom spores? Are they going to die of something toxic?
Stef: Unless it’s supposed to be uranium or something?
Stef: Ohh booby trap, lovely!
Fiona: The spikes are literally bending… I feel like they could easily squeeze out.
[They find a cave full of old treasures.]
Stef: Not quite as satisfying as ingots.
[Mr Wentworth uses the chalice to drink from a font.]
Stef: Please tell me it’s poisoned or something. But maybe as he’s already stark raving bonkers it won’t matter.
Fiona: Oh is he having visions of WW2? So it’s obviously set in the run up to WW2 but she’s wearing converse.
[Mr Wentworth runs off with a lit stick of dynamite.]
Stef: That fuse went off extremely quickly?
Stef: Why is there always another way out?
[The children climb on the font to escape.]
Fiona: Ohh sacrilegious!
Stef: Finally Julian’s taking charge! I’ve only been waiting an hour and a half!
[They climb out onto the island somewhere different.]
Fiona: Just another random hole in the ground.
Stef: What’s he got with him?
Fiona: A sack of treasure? Where did that come from?
[Dick tells the others that the water was contaminated with fungal spores.]
Fiona: I did call mushroom spores.
Stef: How are they going to get the island back? (Quentin sold it to Mr Wentworth earlier).
Fiona (on a wild tangent): Timmy might belong to someone, the diver might have had a wife…
[Quentin says the Five appear to be getting on famously.]
Both: Laughing.
Fiona: Where is this, a hospital?
Stef: His home?
Fiona: Why is he wearing a straight jacket at home?
Fiona: Peril on the Night Train, what the heck? What book is that supposed to be from?
I’ve a part two in the works with some (hopefully) more coherent reviewing.