Mallory Towers!

[PlomBear]

On BBC iplayer from Monday!

Sally is wrong. I'm sure she had straight hair and plaits

I think they've got her personality just right though. Intelligent, serious - mostly - and with that jealous streak.

I thought Gwen was more blandly pretty. It was Angela in the St Claire’s books who was the stunner. When Gwen faked a heart condition in the Upper Fourth to get out of School Cert and her parents took her to a specialist, it was said she needed to get some of her fat off.

Loved this and saw it through different eyes as an adult e.g. pushing the girls towards careers was quite forward thinking at that time.
One huge disappointment for me was the 5 second flash right at the end of Gwendoline crossing her fingers behind her back! Ruined the happy, feel good factor 🙁

I don't think Gwen was meant to be stunningly beautiful. Pretty maybe when she was younger but it was mentioned several times as she moved up through the school that she needed to lose weight and had spots.
Daphne was beautiful and much admired by Gwen.

One huge disappointment for me was the 5 second flash right at the end of Gwendoline crossing her fingers behind her back! Ruined the happy, feel good factor

But she’s never going to be nice to Darrell etc. I thought it was a good acknowledgment of that. Plus it was a good lead in to the next series.

Yes....Gwen was pretty enough but had to lose weight and had spots.... Daphne Millicent Turner was stunningly beautiful but I seem to remember that that was pretty much her only redeeming feature.... the Honourable Clarissa Carter was plain and unnoticeable until she stopped wearing glasses (I think she also had braces? Did braces even exist in the 1940s?)....wasn't Enid Blyton delightful about the characters she'd created!

A wire on her teeth, I think Blyton called it. Would it have been one that involved some sort of entire head contraption?

Clarissa was an auburn haired green eyed beauty but no one noticed until she had her brace taken off and didn't need glasses any more.

Thank heaven for David Walliams Company for producing this superb entertainment almost as nostalgic as Dad's Army and even the Canadian accents are forgiven

@LittleBearPad I know but I wanted the Enid Blyton Malory Towers magic wand of insight and redemption to be waved over her as well.

Just finished a binge watch. I love it and I forgive them their modernisation because it all rings true. Also they had to modernise because they can’t reproduce the more unsavoury elements.

Alicia seems like the sort of girl I’ve taught in similar situations.

Does anyone remember Anchovy Toast? It may have been St Clare's. I remember having no clue what an anchovy was when I read it.

Yes! Wasn’t someone meant to be making it for a sixth former & had no idea what to do?

Fifth Formers at St Clare's - Antoinette, Claudine's younger sister.

she was skivying for Angela and Angela asked her to make anchovy toast. Antoinette put shoe polish on the toast instead of anchovy paste - quite deliberately as she didn't like Angela. She pretended she had got confused. She also used a very expensive jar of face cream to clean Angela's shoes.

Great memory SerenDippitty. What a naughty girl that Antoinette was.

I had absolutely NO idea that this was available. We're going to watch it right NOW!

Thank you OP and all.

If they did a series a year, which is what usually happens, the actress will be about 18 at the same time. Like Harry Potter grew with the films, so would Darrell.

Eeek. That was supposed to be a reply to someone. First time using this so pressed enter too soon. I'll try again.

@JudyCoolibar, If they did a series a year, which is what usually happens, the actress will be about 18 at the same time. Like Harry Potter grew with the films, so would Darrell.

I've only just started watching the series. I'm sort of enjoying it at the same time as being annoyed by it. At first I thought the uniforms were bad but then realised that they were summer uniforms.

My main gripe with it is that it is too politically correct. I don't have a problem with ethnic minorities being brought into modern dramas etc but it annoys me when it's done for the sake of it. It's supposed to be set in the 1940's just post war when the majority of people were white British especially at public school. If a program was made about a Caribbean family or Chinese family (for example) you wouldn't have white actors playing their parts. Surely it should be the same vice versa. I think when things get too PC it can be equally damaging. It's almost as if they are trying to airbrush out, how things really were during the 40's. I know it's fiction and public schools weren't really like that anyway, but if it's based on a book, I think they should keep it as close as possible to the original.

It's probably because as a lover of Enid Blyton books (even now), I have a fixed image in my mind of how the characters should be. So far I haven't found any drama series based on the books up to scratch including an old children's BBC movie of the Famous Five made in black and white. All of them seem to miss something of the characters that I've imagined. Just my opinion. Saying all that, I still have to carry on watching.

@AppleKatie I can't remember any really unsavory bits of the books and I've read them recently. I think if program makers make a program based in a certain time period then it should reflect that era. My opinion is that if makers had made a school program based in a modern school, then multi racial casting would be completely fine, but if it's set in a 1940's school, then the casting is all wrong. It's ironic that Enid Blyton books were sold and loved by children all over the world even though they were largely based on middle class white British families, but that was how things were back then. I read most of Enid Blyton's books as a child and never had a problem with the jolly hockey sticks language even though that was about 30 years before my time. I'm glad to say I still have the majority of her books and ones prior to the PC brigade editing of the 80's. They weren't nearly as bad as the critics made out.

I have to say I found the casting of MT completely wrong apart from Darrell and Gwendoline. Mary Lou wasn't bad but thought she'd be better as Clarissa, (if they dyed her hair auburn). Mary Lou didn't wear glasses. There also wasn't enough of the main characters, (at least as far as I've watched) such as Irene who's supposed to be a scatter brained genius and Betty, from West Tower. Also, Darrell didn't leave St Hilda's under a cloud.

I really must try to enjoy the series for what it is, loosely based on the books, but it's hard being such an Enid Blyton fan.

I distinctly remember Irene being described as a genius at maths and music and pretty good everything else. No way she’d have been in remedial, don’t think there was remedial in the books. I don’t think Mary Lou is quite right either. She didn’t blossom as a singer until the fifth year when she played Cinderella in the panto.

If they do do more series they can’t do Zerelda. Zerelda was given a hard time in the books, by teachers as well as pupils, for having an American accent!

The biggest casting mismatch in my opinion is Alicia. I keep thinking of this ultra-bright, energetic, lithe and lissom creature. The actor/character is none of those things. I can't imagine her being able to do the acrobatics that Alicia the character can do either.

I agree with what other posters have said about the political correctness and the translation to screen grates. As a stand alone school drama it would have been better but Enid Blyton wasn't a particularly nice woman, she was snarky and attuned to the female psyche... she would have fitted into Mumsnet perfectly - and her portrayal of characters reflected that.

The elephant in the room is that the actor playing Alicia is significantly bigger than her classmates yet that's a juxtaposition from the books in which it was Gwendoline (Mary Lacy!) who was 'pudding-like' - and the actor is not. Fatness was not seen positively in children in the 1940s (or ever) and a popular classmate would have had the classic physique - and then other attributes on top.

I'm enjoying the drama, it's set in a glorious place, but the missing out of teaching lessons that were evident in the books, can't be glossed over for me. This Enid Blyton and was of a time and era that can't be meddled with, in my opinion.

Oh yes, and Alicia's accent - Canadian. I don't know why she had to be Canadian... Alicia was English. It grates.

Why is this a Canadian production?

The diversity reflects the common wealth I think that’s fair enough and probably historically accurate.

I’m as wary of being woke as I am of a whitewash. Nothing wrong with a middle ground which I think they have found.

Zerelda is thought badly of in the books for her personality and the fact that’s she’s American, in this version no doubt they will focus on her faults as an individual rather than as a representative of her continent. If she’s not the only one that will help that!