If you'd told me right after Nicolas Winding Refn had delivered unto us the masterful Netflix series Copenhagen Cowboy (about prostitutes and criminals and psychopaths and all his usual jazz) that he'd next turn to adapting a series of vintage kid's adventure books, I'd have given birth to a shoe. Right then and there. A shoe would have fallen out of me. From where? Don't ask. But it would have happened. So I am glad they waited a little bit to tell me this news, is my point. I don't need shoes falling out of places. Anyway Deadline is reporting today that Refn is indeed turning Enid Blyton's series of The Famous Five books into a miniseries for the BBC -- are any of you familiar with these books? Because I sure as hell am not.
They were published from the 1940s until the 1960s (you can buy a reasonably priced box-set of all 22 books right here) and they sound very Hardy Boys -- they're about four children named Julian, Dick, Anne, George, plus their dog Timmy (love that the dog gets included!) who go on big adventures during their school holidays. They've apparently been adapted several times over the years, but I've still never heard of them -- that said I think I have a pretty good idea of what they consist of in my head. That that said I still cannot for the life of me picture what Nicolas Winding Refn taking on this project will look like in the end. I guess he felt like mixing it up!
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George's actually name is btw Georgina
which makes them one of the first tomboyish/enbie ish role models
I grew up on them in Scotland in the 1960s. They're very much of their period and now hopelessly susceptible to parody. What NWR will make of them goodness knows. He might go full Barbie and take that world head on.
Some few years agoi I re-reaed Five on a Hike Together, to see how it struck me decades afrter devouring it as a kid.
There are a pair of villains, one of whom is female. It is made clear, when the villains are camping in the countryside, that they occupy separate tents (none of *that*!). And her villainy is pointed up by the fact that she wears...trousers!
All of the above.
I 'm British and was a precocious reader. Hence as a five to eight year old I devoured them as adventure books. Then i moved on to Agatha Christie via Roald Dahl and onwards.
I guess they've aged horrendously.
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