Mallory Towers

[Merryoldgoat]

Anyone watching it and getting pissed off with the inconsistencies?

I can deal with the mixing up of events but I cannot deal with nasty matron.

Is it just me? I’m 42 and way too invested...

What's this on?? I loved the books!!

Iplayer! I loved them too and recently reread them.

The TV series is pissing me off

Is it good?

It’s quite fun but it’s not ‘amazing’

I have loved this series.

I'm 58 and read them over 50yrs ago! And I'm sad enough to be watching it and even sadder that I'm criticising the characters based on my memories of them 😂

The multi-racial cast is incongruous. There wouldn't have been any BAME girls or staff at Mallory Towers.

Me OP (& dd1) - it's fun but artistic licence has just been stretched way too far.....

@MrsJoshNavidi - agree. The official explanation is that it reflects the Empire/Commonwealth countries who would have send girls to boarding school here at the time. I'm not convinced....

Um... not in the 1950s.

I am enjoying it. I loved the books as a child. Some things are annoying though. Why has Darrell been expelled from another school? That wasnt in the books. And what's all the stuff about a ghost?

@rosy71 - there's an existing thread that you might find interesting, including discussion of the various departures from the book!

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/telly_addicts/3855540-Mallory-Towers

The official explanation is that it reflects the Empire/Commonwealth countries who would have send girls to boarding school here at the time. I'm not convinced....

Me neither. I doubt there would have been any non white girls in a boarding school in a country that put "no dogs, no blacks, no irish" in its boarding house windows etc.

@GCAcademic Thank you.

It's enjoyable as a drama about a 1940s boarding school. But it's not Malory Towers. The diversity, the nasty matron, Miss Grayling sporting an engagement ring and a photo of her dead fiance on the window sill, and a plump Alicia speaking with an American accent, all wrong.
And if they were only going to keep one mamzell it should have been mamzelle Dupont.

I have a lot of family members who were at boarding school on the same era and they have all said there were always BAME pupils there, but usually from overseas. I have a few of my DF’s book from that period and his friends have written comments/inscriptions inside the cover and there are Persian (now Iranian), Indian and African names.

That aside, the series is irking me as it’s nothing like the Malory Towers I remember!

So relieved to read these comments as I thought it would just be me frustrated at the way they've made this series of MT so PC. I KNOW its only 'based on' the books and that yes, the 1940s and 1950s were not fair on a lot of people but they happened and we shouldn't try and make them modern for the sake of it. If they want to make a modern MT then don't use the old fashioned/original stuff such as hairstyles and phones - just do a 2020s version! And don't add ridiculous storylines to a classic set of books - a ghost? Word Blindness? Pamela leaving to her deb's ball from school? How can Darrell have dyslexia - it states in the books "Darrell had always found writing easy" when she wrote to Sallys mother and later in the series she writes a flipping pantomime and eventually leaves to study Arts at St Andrews to become a writer!

That aside I did like the actresses who played Darrell, Mary-Lou and Miss Grayling but so many of the others were too unlike the original characters. Matron was supposed to be nice unless a pupil tried to pretend she was ill, Mademoiselle was plump and funny with a quick temper, Mademoiselle Rougier was thin and angular and not pretty or stylish!

OK maybe I'm over- analysing this way too much blame the lockdown!!

I doubt very much that there were that many overweight children in the 1950s.
And the ghost? Definitely not from the books. And the way they are portraying matron- aaargh!!

They got Gwendoline right, at least.

I'm wondering what pc changes they'll make to future series. A transgender Bill? A Daphne whose stealing will not be down to snobbish vanity but to some trauma in her past? A Miss Peters involved in a lesbian affair with one of the teachers?

a plump Alicia speaking with an American accent

Yes, weird. Why???

I hate watching films or TV series of books I've loved because the characters and storyline are both always messed about with 😡😡

I’m glad you are all of the same mind.

I don’t mind the colourblind casting - you just ignore it after a while - it’s not like it ‘matters’ to the stories or plot. My grandmother (who is black and Portuguese) went to a very mixed boarding school in the 40s so it’s doesn’t seem as jarring as it could be.

I don’t mind the overweight girls either.

I do mind the nasty matron, Darrell having dyslexia given she was a bright girl who got led astray by Alicia, the glam Mamzelle, and all the odd shoe horning of as many issues as they can cram in.

I didn’t like the casting of Darrell’s dad either - I always imagined a more imposing presence.

Sorry - obviously you can be bright with dyslexia - I mean in the books she had no learning difficulties, she was just distracted.

The ghost of malory towers does appear (although slightly differently) in one of the later books which was written by Pamela Cox.

I have long been an avid fan of the books - read them many times over as a child and then read them all to my two DDs. I thought they did quite a good job of the series - there was enough in them that was taken directly from the books. I didn't see the point of the ghost story stuff, but other than that I enjoyed it.

My 7 and 10 year old DDs absolutely loved the series, and I guess they are the target audience. They are now re-reading the books to themselves.

We've been watching this too and have enjoyed it in spite of the departures from the books (both DDs know them inside out so nothing has escaped their notice). That said, the one thing none of us enjoyed was how unkind Matron is - it seemed completely unnecessary and didn't add to the storyline.

The scenes filmed by the pool all had similar bits in them, like they hadnt taken enough shots so needed to reuse some of them, anyone else think that?