According to Wikipedia, Timmy will be played by a border collie in the new BBC Famous Five adaptation.
This is outrageous. I know some of the 80s editions of the books had Timmy on their cover as a border collie but he’s not. He’s a huge, fearsome, loyal protective mongrel who can hold back a bunch of bad guys in a tunnel allowing the kids to escape. Border collies are lovely and highly intelligent but no border collie could hold back a tunnel full of armed bad guys.
Here is the original description of Timmy-
“They sat up and looked to see what Timothy was like. They saw no
fisher-boy—but instead a big brown mongrel dog with an absurdly long
tail and a big wide mouth that really seemed to grin! He was bounding
all round George, mad with delight. She came running down to them.
‘This is Timothy,’ she said. ‘Don’t you think he is simply perfect?’
As a dog, Timothy was far from perfect. He was the wrong shape, his head
was too big, his ears were too pricked, his tail was too long and it was
quite impossible to say what kind of a dog he was supposed to be. But he
was such a mad, friendly, clumsy, laughable creature that every one of
the children adored him at once.”
Border collies already get a lot of glory in movies and TV shows. Now they are stealing a mongrel’s chance to shine.