Mallory Towers!

[PlomBear]

On BBC iplayer from Monday!

Alright, so I must admit, I watched all of it yesterday. I generally think it was pretty well done, although I don't know why they bothered with the "Darrell was expelled from previous school and Gwen is blackmailing her" etc storyline. Weird match too. Totally unnecessary IMO, and I agree with all the gratuitous swimming and lack of teachers.

Mostly found it strange having some things modernised but it being set at the same time. I think I was expecting a bit more of The Crown in terms of "proper" accents and the like. I'm glad they've modernised it in terms of cultural diversity, though. I suppose you can't win.

Irene is the best first form actress out the lot of them, though. The rest are all so stilted it's tricky to enjoy properly.

I won't spoil it for those who haven't finished, but I found the resolution of one of the storylines at the end totally bizarre and poorly explained - a particular family relationship and the lead-up to that discovery. Bit convoluted for the sake of drama, I thought.

Love love love dyslexic Darrell, though!

I'm missing the brown and orange tunic and tie. I hope they wear it in the next series.
When i reread the books to dd a few years ago I thought that EB may have written Gwendolyn Mary as a warning to her dds about how not to behave when she sent them to boarding school. Eg. Crying when leaving her or she'd be mocked by the other girls.

I hope they include the trick with the invisible chalk saying Oy on the back of Mamzelle's skirt. Shame Mamzelle Dupont's not in it

I think Darrel would have ended up in isolation by now if she went to a modern day comp!
The haircutting teacher punishment was a bit odd!

The acting is very stage school & overdone., but fairly typical for a children's drama. I can live with the diversity, but the acting is unforgiveable.

Wow!

Just found this, so happy, I love Malory Towers!

Love love love dyslexic Darrell, though!

But not so keen on the implication that it had been cured within a couple of weeks ...

When i reread the books to dd a few years ago I thought that EB may have written Gwendolyn Mary as a warning to her dds about how not to behave when she sent them to boarding school. Eg. Crying when leaving her or she'd be mocked by the other girls.

Sounds perfectly plausible, as a memoir by one of her daughters makes her sound almost psychopathically awful as a mother, even by the 'distant, leave it to the nanny' standards of her time and class (though her older sister disagreed). I think I remember her younger daughter being quoted somewhere as saying she was about four before she realised the woman who came into the nursery to give her her Saturday penny was actually her mother.

Mind you, I suppose the 'conform or be legitimately bullied' strain was strong in that generation (and remains so to an extent, as seen on any baby names thread here where someone moots an unusual name), though EB seems to have extended that to 'Don't be foreign, or working-class, or new money, or be in any way focused on your own talents -- unless you're Belinda or Irene, in which case you're allowed, because your entire form agrees with you...'

I think in the books she's young in the year isn't she, so that might be why she went later? I'm not sure about the need for unnecessary extra drama!

This Matron is awful!

Why change her character so much?

Matron in the books is firm and no nonsense, but she is also kind and caring.

I was so disappointed by the three episodes that I have watched so far. The entire cast seems to consist of Darrell and her friends, plus a few teachers. Where are the extras that would make it appear to be a real school? The acting is dire from most of the girls, the script is stilted, and most of the plot lines far removed from the books. And Matron appears to have been plucked straight out of Dahl. I will get flamed for this I am sure, but generally speaking, boarding schools in the fifties did not have as many ethnically diverse girls or teachers as the programme suggests. If you are going to recreate a girls' boarding school from the fifties then at least make it accurate.

I always though there were about 40 girls per year, split between the four towers.

I also don't understand why they had a lacrosse team of six (usually twelve), but I can't remember the books well enough to remember if they had a first year team or all the teams were taken from across the school.

Karen you're quite right.
My 9 year old, who has read all the books even said the same.

I think in the books she's young in the year isn't she, so that might be why she went later? I'm not sure about the need for unnecessary extra drama!

That's actually one of the oddities of both Malory Towers and St Clare's, which I noticed even as a child -- Darrell starts at MT in the first form and there isn't a lower form, but almost everyone else in her form (with the exception of Sally and a few others) has already been at MT for some time. Likewise the O'Sullivan twins also arrive at St Clare's in the first form, but no one else is new.

It was the fagging for the older girls by the younger ones that fascinated me in the books, though from what I remember that was mostly at St Clare's -- there was a bit I found completely baffling as a child about some first former being bawled out by a senior because she had got her tasks in the wrong order and cleaned the senior's muddy boots before putting the kettle on to boil. I didn't grasp how much longer it would have taken for a kettle to come to the boil over an open fire, and didn't get what all the fuss was about. (Or that privileged girls like Pat and Isobel, who were expecting to go to an 'exclusive' school where the girls wore evening dress for dinner before their father decides to send them to 'sensible' St Clare's, would never have done anything like cleaning muddy boots in their lives...)

What a pity, no subtitles yet again.

So much of the iPlayer content lacks subtitles, even those shows which have subtitles when broadcast live. It baffles me, this disregard for the BBC’s own Accessibility Policy.

I’m in hiding for the next 12 weeks so MT is perfectly timed!

I really, really don’t like the TV version of Matron. They’ve basically turned her into a David Walliams character mixed with Miss Trunchbull. I do like the ethnic diversity of the cast - yes it’s true that it’s highly unlikely that it would be reflective of a 1940s English boarding school, but good for the 21st century young audience. Also really love that Jean’s facial disfigurement (hope that word isn’t offensive - I can’t think of another one) never gets mentioned at all; she’s seen as exactly the same as all of the others; and even goes in goal in lacrosse even though I wonder if the actress has impaired vision in her right eye. I also like that Darrell finds learning more difficult than the Darrell in the books, who was generally top or near the top throughout the six books and found everything irritatingly easy. It’s a shame they’ve missed out Mamzelle DuPont, though, and I agree with the PP who commented on how few staff they’ve got! They seem to have two members of staff for a very well resourced san but only two teachers for the whole school!

I'm a big fan of the original books but I've been enjoying watching the series with my DDs. They've stuck to quite a bit of the original plot. I think the actresses playing Darrell and Gwen are doing a good job. I didn't like Darrell much in the books but I quite like her in this version.

@Starksforthewin I’m watching on iPlayer and all have subtitles

Have you pressed the S at the bottom

And think they have 3 terms - so others there sept - jan

And I think darryl joined April hence the sun and swimming so she did one term of first year

Alicia is Canadian not American

There's definitely subtitles

Well we've watched the whole thing and whilst they changed a lot, (and my initial reaction was not a good one) we all got quite hooked and enjoyed it.

I liked that Darrell wasn't quite so up herself though I didn't like her made up back story. She did have a 'journey' through the term which was interesting and there were lots of lessons to be learnt along the way. Gwen was horrible, more than in the books I think. The actress who played her did a lovely line in sneers!

Mary Lou was great, I didn't like how Alicia was portrayed, where was her sharp tongue? Betty was referred to but did we see her?? Sally was also well portrayed, earnest and kind.

The dormy looked comfier than I imagined, I loved the chintzy look of it with the bedspreads.

I'd like to know where it was filmed, the location was great with the pool, I could never quite imagine it being hollowed out of the rock but now I can.

I would have still loved to go to Malory Towers and I'm planning on buying the Pamela Cox sequels to read to DDs.

@morriseysquif, I really enjoyed spotting all the quilt and croquet patterns!

*crochet

I was fully prepared for it to be different from the books, so I appreciated it in its own right. I really liked Darrell.

The one thing I found really disappointing was the lacrosse - I expected it to be more fast paced and dangerous, and it just looked like wussy pretending.

I watched 5 episodes today. It’s nothing like the books, but it still had a rather lovely innocence and nostalgia about it.

I’ve been feeling very stressed about the current situation, struggling to sleep, and generally being quite moody, but for the space of those 5 episodes, I felt 100x better! Just what I needed!