The Famous Five (series)

2008/9 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Children's Books

The Famous Five (series)
Author	Enid Blyton
Country	UK
Language	English
Genre(s)	Mystery, Adventure
Publisher	Hodder & Stoughton
Publication date	September, 1942
Media type	Print ( hardcover and paperback)
ISBN	ISBN 0-340-79614-6 (Hodder)
Followed by	' Five Go Adventuring Again (1943)

The Famous Five is Enid Blyton's most popular and celebrated series of children's books. The sequence began life in 1942, when the first book, Five on a Treasure Island was published, and it has won great acclaim from both fans and critics. The series has gone on to become amongst the best-loved stories ever to have been written for children.

All the "Famous Five" books have been adapted for television at some stage.

The series feature a fictional group of children - Julian, Dick, Anne and George - and their dog Timmy. Blyton also created several such groups for her detective series, including The Secret Seven and Five Find-Outers and Dog, but the Famous Five are the best-known and most popular of these.

Blyton only intended to write about 6 to 8 books in the series but, owing to their high sales and immense commercial success, she went on to write 21 full-length books featuring these memorable characters. Indeed, by the end of 1953, more than 6 million copies of these books had been printed and sold.

Even today, more than two million copies of the books are sold each year, making them one of the biggest-selling series for children ever written.

Overview

Three of the children, Julian, Dick and Anne, are siblings. During their holidays, they are regularly sent to the seaside town of Kirrin to stay with their Aunt Fanny and Uncle Quentin, whose daughter, Georgina, is a tomboy always known as George.

The stories almost always take place in the children's holidays when they come home from their respective boarding schools. Every time they get together, they get caught up in an adventure, the location of which varies from book to book. Sometimes the scene is set close to George's home at Kirrin Cottage: " Kirrin Island", a picturesque island in Kirrin Bay, for example, presents many opportunities for adventure. Since both George's own home and various other houses are hundreds of years old, there is room for much in the way of secret passages or smugglers' tunnels, which play a central role in the plot of several books in the series. On other occasions, the children may go camping or hiking or be sent on holiday together elsewhere, but they are always accompanied by George's dog, Timothy, affectionately known to the children as Timmy. The settings, however, are almost always rural and enable the children to discover the simple joys of cottages, picnics, ginger beer, bicycle trips, home-made food, islands, sea shores, and always have a thrilling adventure.

Blyton always said that George was based on a real girl she had once known: in her later life, she admitted that that girl was herself.

Characters

• George (Georgina) Kirrin: Georgina is a tomboy, demanding that people call her George. By cutting her hair very short and dressing like a boy, she is often mistaken for one, something which pleases her enormously. She is headstrong by nature and, like her father, Quentin, has a fiery temper.

• Dick (Richard) Kirrin: George's cousin, and brother of Julian and Anne, sometimes mistaken for George because of his behaviour and dark hair. Dick is the joker of the group, but also very thoughtful.

• Julian Kirrin: The eldest of the five, cousin to George and older brother to Dick and Anne. He is an intelligent boy and a natural leader whose cleverness and reliability is often noted by Aunt Fanny.

• Anne Kirrin: The youngest in the group, and written by Blyton as girlish, with a natural instinct to mother the others. She famously dislikes the adventures the Five constantly encounter, but soldiers on loyally.

• Timmy: George's dog and the unofficial mascot for the group, who is available to attack unwanted people on George's command. Timmy is the archetypal loyal mongrel-clever, affectionate and fiercely loyal to his owners and to George in particular; he provides physical protection for the children on multiple occasions. George adores Timmy and thinks that Timmy is beautiful. In the first book of the series, George's parents forbid her to keep Timmy and George is forced to hide him. After the end of their first adventure, they relent and she allowed to keep him.
• Jo, the gypsy girl: First appears in "Five fall into adventure" and in several others. The first adventure finds her in an abusive relationship with her father, but when he is sent to prison she is fostered. She has the only romantic interest in the books, being obviously attracted to Dick. He had hit her when they first met, believing her to be a boy - and was later mortified. She immediately liked him.

• Fanny Kirrin: George's mother, and aunt to Dick, Julian and Anne. Aunt Fanny is married to Uncle Quentin, and is, through most of Blyton's Famous Five novels, the principal maternal figure in the lives of the children. (Julian, Dick and Anne's parents are very rarely seen, and rarely even mentioned, as most of their adventures take place on school holidays while visiting the village of Kirrin.)

• Quentin Kirrin: George's father, and a famous inventor and scientist. He possesses an infamous temper and has little tolerance for children on school holidays, but is nevertheless not as heartless as he may at first seem. In the first book of the series, it is established that he is the brother of Julian, Dick and Anne's father.

The characters, as is usual in Blyton's fiction, are outlined with very few words, and there is very limited description of scenes, but this style of writing keeps children's attention and is seen by enthusiasts as fuelling their imagination and encouraging them to think for themselves. Blyton's characterisation, however, has also been much criticised as being stereotyped and encouraging sexist attitudes; and the books have as a result been extensively parodied (see below).

Television series

1978 series

The Famous Five 1978 television series was produced by Southern Television for the ITV network in the UK, in 26 episodes of thirty minutes. It starred Michele Gallagher as Georgina, Marcus Harris as Julian, Jennifer Thanisch as Anne, Gary Russell as Dick, Toddy Woodgate as Timmy, Michael Hinz as Uncle Quentin and Sue Best as Aunt Fanny. It also starred Ronald Fraser, John Carson, Patrick Troughton, James Villiers, Cyril Luckham and Brian Glover. The screenplays were written by Gloria Tors, Gail Renard, Richard Carpenter and Richard Sparks. The episodes were directed by Peter Duffell, Don Leaver, James Gatward and Mike Connor. The series was produced by Don Leaver and James Gatward.

Finnish punk rock band Widows (of Helsinki) made three different cover versions of the theme song, first one in early 1979 ,as did Irish Indie outfit Fleur, in 1996.

All the books apart from Five on a Treasure Island, Five Have a Mystery to Solve and Five Have Plenty of Fun were dramatised; the first two were excluded because the Children's Film Foundation still had the film and TV rights to the books (see below), and the third because it could not fit in the production schedule. Plans to make a third series which would have included this story plus new ones written purely for television were abandoned after the Blyton estate exercised its veto. The series was originally released on video in the 1980s by Portman Productions.

1996 series

A later TV series was produced around 1996, a co-production between a number of companies including HTV, Zenith North and the German channel ZDF; this was also shown on ITV in the UK. Unlike the previous series, this was a period piece, set in 1953, and also unlike the previous series it dramatised all the original books. Of the juvenile actors the best-known is probably Jemima Rooper, who played George. In this series, to fit in with the fact that "Fanny" has other meanings, Aunt Fanny was known as Aunt Frances. (In recent reprints of the book, the character has been re-christened Aunt Franny.)

2008 series

In 2008, there will be an animated TV series, set in modern times and featuring the children of the original Famous Five. These children will be known as Cole, Dylan, Jo and Allie. The new series was first announced in 2005, and is a co-production between Chorion (which currently owns all Famous Five rights) and Marathon in association with France 3 and The Disney Channel. Disney confirmed their involvement in December 2006. Stories are currently being developed by Douglas Tuber and Tim Maile, who have previously written for Lizzie McGuire. Chorion claims on its Web site that "these new programmes will remain faithful to the themes of mystery and adventure central to Enid Blyton’s classic series of books." In total, there will be 26 episodes, and each episode will be 22 minutes long.

Adult series

On the 28th August 2007, it was announced on the BBC News website that a revival of The Famous Five is being developed . Julian, Dick, Anne and Georgina were all going to be in the story - now all as adults in their forties; they would also be joined by a descendant of Timmy The Dog. Co-developer Twofour states "casting and writing talent is still very much under wraps and no broadcaster is yet confirmed. However, some of the best-known acting talent in Britain is already under consideration."

Video and DVD

The 1978 series was released on video with reasonable regularity between 1983 and 1999, many of which are still easy to find second-hand, although the sound and picture quality is not always what it could be.

A four-disc DVD collection, containing 23 of the 26 episodes produced for the 1978 series (and two episodes from the 1996 series) was released in region 4 (Australia and New Zealand) in 2005. The box and disc art identify it as a release of 1996 series. (The distributor had licenced the 1996 series but due to an administrative glitch, it was supplied with master tapes and artwork for the 1978 series.) The error was corrected in a later release.

The 1996 series was released in its entirety on video; only the adaptation of Five On A Treasure Island seems to have been released on DVD in the UK, although there are apparently some rare mainland European DVD releases of the series, available via certain websites in the UK (these are, of course, Region 2 DVDs).

A three-disc DVD collection, containing 13 of the 26 episodes of the 1996 series, was released in Australia and New Zealand in 2005 (these are region 4 DVDs). This release followed the erroneous release of the 1978 series with 1996 artwork, and is marked "Revised Edition" to avoid confusion.

There are also two Children's Film Foundation films of the Famous Five books - Five On A Treasure Island, made in 1957, and Five Have A Mystery To Solve, produced in 1963 - plus other film adaptations of the books made in countries such as Denmark.

Movies

Two of the Famous Five stories by Enid Blyton have been filmed by Danish director Katrine Hedman. The cast consisted of Danish actors and the movie was originally released in Danish. Ove Sprogøe stars as Uncle Quentin. The movies are: De 5 og spionerne (Five and the Spies) (1969) and De 5 i fedtefadet (Famous Five Get in Trouble) (1970).

Radio dramas

21 stories by Enid Blyton have been released as Fünf Freunde radio dramas in Germany as well. The speakers were originally the German dubbing artists for Gallagher, Thanisch, Russell and Harris, the protagonists of the first television series. As the stories continued, the speakers were replaced by younger ones, because it was felt that they sounded too mature. In addition to the original Blyton books, another 48 stories have subsequently been released and published as radio plays and books in Germany. They are based on the original characters, but written by various German writers.

Computer Game

In 1990 an interactive fiction computer game based on the first of the books, Five On A Treasure Island, was released. It was programmed by Colin Jordan and first released for the little known SAM Coupé by Enigma Variations.

He originally started coding the game on the ZX Spectrum using his own "worldscape" technique. When the SAM Coupé was launched, he switched to it as the target platform while still hosting the code on the ZX Spectrum. He later ported it to the Amstrad CPC and completed the ZX Spectrum version. The game was also ported to the Commodore 64, Amiga and Atari ST by others.

Comic books

Six comic books created by Bernard Dufossé and scripted by Serge Rosenzweig and Rafael Carlo Marcello were released in France between 1982 and 1986. Most of comic books in the series are based on Famous Five books created by Claude Voilier. Books were released by Hachette Livre.

Parodies

The Five also inspired the Comic Strip parody Five Go Mad in Dorset and its sequel Five Go Mad On Mescalin, in which the characters express sympathies with Nazi Germany and opposition to the Welfare State, homosexuals, immigrants and Jews, in an extremely broad parody not so much of Blyton but of wider perceived 1950s prejudices. The parodies were deliberately set towards the end of the original Famous Five "era" (1942-1963) so as to make the point that the books were already becoming outmoded while they were still being written, although the continuing popularity of the books even in the 21st Century may be seen to suggest otherwise. Both parodies made tight use of Famous Five set pieces, such as the surrender of the criminals at the end when Julian states "We're the famous five!", the arrival of the police just in the nick of time, and the appeal for "some of your home-made ices" at a village shop.

A story in The Guardian's G2 supplement also parodies the Famous Five. It argues that Anne, Dick, George and Julian are caricatures rather than characters, portraying Anne as having no life outside of domestic labour. It highlights what the writer, Lucy Mangan, considers to be the power struggle between Dick, George and Julian while Anne is sidelined.