BBC to bring the famous five to TV

Good point!

Very good! 😂

@C00kp1ssBabtridge you need to keep reporting back to us 😁 Sounds great, I'm very excited. My dd's love the Malloy Towers tv series!

Timmy is super cute and quite the professional 😂They seem to be filming Treasure Island at the moment

@C00kp1ssBabtridge thanks for putting us out of our misery! Georgy sounds fab! Any other spoilers 🙏

This is currently being filmed where I am on holiday. There's nothing to suggest George is trans, she looks like a very pretty young woman, dressed in dungarees. She is a person of colour.

There was a period in my life (as an adult) when to answer truthfully the last book I read it would have been ‘Each Peach, Pear, Plum’, ‘Peace at Last’, or ‘Goodnight Moon’

Also this thread from 2015 on gender and biological preferences v social conditioning is quite interesting. The OP is trying to make the point (perhaps a bit clunkily) that there may be some biological basis for different behaviours in males and females and there is a lot of disagreement. I can remember being on one of these threads and how black and white people were. I think things have moved on now and there is a shift towards people saying it’s a mixture of nature v nurture. I suspect Helen Joyce is right when she says Trans activism has made people realise that biology is more important than previous feminist theories suggested.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/relationships/2405714-Feminism-but-is-there-some-truth-in-the-stereotype-of-gender-roles

So it can definitely be done, and within a historical context.

Off topic but the railway children sequal is an example of diversity being put into a story and it working well and being historically accurate (within the bounds of child friendliness and a feel good film). I guess it also helped that it is one of the cases where the UK came out looking better than America re racism so it was also more appealing in that regard.

🤣🤣🤣🤣

fatty was always dressing up a girl, "in disguise" was what the find outters called it

Ah, so he would already have qualified under the modern Stonewall 'trans umbrella' then - no need for revisionist editors to trans George from the F5 or any other EB characters!

"Do be very, very careful, Fatty, you mustn't take any unnecessary risks."

"Don't you worry about me, Daisy. I have my notebook and pen, my penknife, my box brownie camera, my torch for signalling with Morse Code and my 2-way transistor radio - Pip has the other one of the pair. I will also take Buster with me, to scare off and chase away any miscreants who might approach me. Plus, as I know that these hardened criminals will stop at nothing if they do spot me, to be on the safe side, I will be wearing my - I mean my sister's - shimmering sequinned evening gown, matching clutch, diamante tiara and pearl necklace to accessorise and 8-inch purple stillettos!"

Apparently, she should have known better and lied. Something by Dickens knowing my mum's tastes...

But Dickens didn't originally write books as such; they were stories that were first serialised in two local newspapers. It was the Bicester Times and it was the Worcester Times

I also had a bit of a pre-pubescent crush on Bill! (I bet Blyton herself did as well; he was definitely quite the cool James Bond type as well as being the ideal exciting stepdad).

Ha! You and me both. Even though his parenting skills were questionable to say the least, and Allie is so in despair at his constantly leading the kids into danger that her solution is to marry him! A strange response to that particular dilemma, but anyone can see why she falls for him.

Agree about the racism in River - not to mention Jo Jo in Island and there are some fairly dubious moments in Circus as well.

Apparently Bill was based on a real bloke. I was trying to remember why/how I knew this, and found this thread here:

Let's have a Bill Smugs appreciation thread - The Enid Blyton Society

I think this is actually very true, come to think of it. And you know, I as an adult read all kinds of books. I'm reading a book about North Korea right now, and I've also got a "cosy village murder mystery" on the go. I guess kids also want comforting easy reads sometimes, just like we do.

I do also agree with another PP, though, that the Adventure series was an awful lot better than the FF; I think Blyton spent a lot more time and care making the stories individual and memorable, and I also had a bit of a pre-pubescent crush on Bill! (I bet Blyton herself did as well; he was definitely quite the cool James Bond type as well as being the ideal exciting stepdad). I'd quite like to see some of those being remade - well, apart from the River of Adventure, which really was quite horrifyingly racist; you'd have to pretty much gut that one to make it acceptable!

@SerafinasGoose fatty was always dressing up a girl, "in disguise" was what the find outters called it😁

Original 'baddies', that was meant to say.

I liked the ones with Fatty, the scottie dog and the Find-Outers who constantly pitted themselves against the gormless village bobby, PC Goon.

They're not as adventurous or as interesting location/nature-wise as the adventure story, but they have a verve and humour that's pretty uncommon in Blyton.

When I think back, dear old 'Ju' was pretty insufferable: a real pompous prig. No wonder George comes up against him so much - the books seem to make us sympathise entirely with Julian as being on the side of the 'right' - but IMO George has some genuine grievances against him as he really does treat her like crap on occasion. All on the premise of 'you're JUST a girl', of course. In one book he actually says to her 'and like it or not, girls have got to be taken care of'.

No wonder he was one of the few characters who never got kidnapped, despite his connection of a military and nuclear-scientific genius of an uncle who knew state secrets. No one could put up with him for more than five seconds at a stretch!

It would be quite interesting to see what a modern audience would make of such attitudes. IMO a heavy satire like The Comic Strip is much more fun and makes the point more strongly than a simple decolonization of a 'white' point in history that's completely devoid of humour. (Even though the originals WERE all 'furriners' with some physical impairment, particularly scars on their necks) ...

@Beowulfa I read the secret seven to the dc also during lockdown. I really enjoyed it. Bossy Peter😁 My dc really enjoyed Susie & Binkie spying on the 7s meetings 😊
The dc have read EBs circus of adventure & other books from that series themselves, they really enjoyed them.

As a child and massive Blyton fan I always wondered why the F5 series was her most well-known, when to me the Adventure series (as mentioned by SerafinasGoose) was the stand-out. I read the Circus of Adventure in a single evening after school aged 7 and it remains the most intensely thrilling literary experience of my life. With a bit of fudging, that series could potentially have a contemporary setting and a diverse cast (blended family) and be much more visually exciting.

I remember my 80s editions of the F5 having an illustration of Anne and George at their boarding school in uniform so both wearing skirts, but George with short hair being herself. Interesting that that is the image that I remember after all these years.

They can't do much with George! Read the series aloud to the dc during lockdown...
The 5 are all different aged & attend boarding school. I would guess George is 11/12, already has adopted George (short for Georgia), wears boys clothes & is as capable as Julian & Dick if not more so. They can't properly trans George as her character is too young & they can't do anymore to make her even more boyish. She is a tomboy simply who really enjoyed when she got mistaken as a boy by strangers.. I hope they use the word tomboy.

Now Anne's character on the other hand.. Always left to make the beds, set up camp, wash up after the other 3! Would like to see Anne a little more modernised..

I'm pretty sure librarians of the fifties were a bit sniffy about them.

My mum (not a librarian) always went on about how Dad's youngest sister truthfully named an Enid Blyton book when asked during a job interview for the most recent book she had read. Apparently, she should have known better and lied. Something by Dickens knowing my mum's tastes...

I think this was even more evident in some of Blyton's other works, such as the Adventure series (with Jack, Lucy-Ann, Philip and Dinah) - where large parts of it were just about the sense of havingan adventure, being together, irrespective of what particular dramatic incidents occurred.

I thought the Adventure Series superior in many ways to the Famous Five (despite the annoying parrot). Much of its beauty was in the way Blyton writes about nature and locations - this lot are more intrepid than the Famous Five and their travels go global - and the way she makes both boys so passionate and knowledgeable about nature and wildlife.

The ballsy, 'George' figure knows fine well she's a girl but despite this inconvenient impediment in life she's well able to hold her own, thank you very much. Whereas Lucy Ann, the youngest, isn't much of an adventurer but she's certainly not always 'playing house', and when the chips really are down she's the bravest of the lot. In one book she offers to do a parachute jump in place of Philip, with only a pair of flimsy wings to hold her up. That kid has mettle!

It's also one of the few examples of a step-family - two adopted kids, a professional mum and later a step-dad - I've ever seen in Blyton. Gosh, how modern ....

Loved the character of Bill Smugs, too.

'For many years now, your Aunt Fanny and I have not had a proper marriage. She's a relentless nymphomaniac. And I am a screaming homosexual'.

Bloody loved those Comic Strip skits!

George was rebelling against the restrictive social role assigned to girls, so if the remake portays her as not a girl because she doesn't subscribe to stereotypes - that's as reactionary as you can get.

Which is still reductive, uninclusive and relying on compartmentalising people into a one-dimensional label-cage constructed of a narrow set of stereotypes - by whether they do or don't adhere to them - rather than treating somebody as an individual with a wide range of interests, characteristics, likes and dislikes, regardless of which of the two sexes they happen to be as a starting point.

Nobody would suggest that, say, if George commented that she didn't like any of roast beef, Elgar, morris dancing, queuing or complaining about the weather, she must therefore clearly not be British.