When Nicolas Winding Refn, the director of cult violent films Pusher and Drive, was announced as one of the creators of the BBC’s new version of The Famous Five, it left members of the Enid Blyton Society spluttering into their ginger beer.
Yes, the Danish film-maker is “reimagining” the adventures of Julian, Dick, Anne, George and Timmy the dog for a “progressive new audience”. True, he’s a Cannes award-winning auteur with a reputation for onscreen hyperviolence. Granted, he once declared “I’m a pornographer” in an interview for his Ryan Gosling vehicle Only God Forgives. But fans can rest assured that they’re set for something magical this Christmas.
Winding Refn has, after all, directed two episodes of Agatha Christie’s Marple for ITV, so has form in bringing classic female British authors to television. Plus both he and long-time collaborator Matthew Read, whose credits include And Then There Were None and Peaky Blinders, are “in a place in our lives where we are wanting to make something our kids would watch”.
One of the things that attracted the 53-year-old to The Famous Five was “the idea of never wanting to grow up”. He sounds almost wistful when he says: “We forget how beautiful it is to be a child when we get older, and how simple things can be so meaningful. Everything is so complicated when you get older.
“That was the core of this: how do we turn The Famous Five not into just another exciting storyline but more of a fantastique? Something magical, something relevant on a larger philosophical level?”
The idea was prompted almost a decade ago when Read was visiting his friend in Los Angeles and one of Winding Refn’s daughters was reading The Famous Five. Then a few years ago, Read secured the rights.
Blyton purists will be relieved that the new show is set in the 1940s and contains enchantment and adventure – as well as a bubblegum-coloured intro, synth soundtrack and a hallucination scene. Winding Refn was influenced by everything from Indiana Jones – there is a stone temple and deadly mechanical traps – to Alfred Hitchcock and Greek tragedies.
“I was always keen to set it around the period it was written,” says Read, who scripted the first episode. This also meant the characters “can’t look things up on the internet or call people up on their mobile phones, which makes it more dramatic”.
Winding Refn explains: “When you have your own children you spend lots of time arguing about screen time … and how they’re affected by screens. Obviously I love screens. But I also find it very frustrating – and certainly in the hands of children, because it’s also very dangerous.”
Going back to the second world war helped keep the show “relevant because there’s something in it that’s universal and larger than the trend of the moment or the technology that’s hip for a year”, says Winding Refn.
“Things go so fast nowadays, it’s hard to capture a moment. But because we go back in time we can capture a sense of make-believe.”
The younger members of the cast think their generation will find the freedom and lack of technology appealing. Kit Rakusen, who plays the knowledgable Dick, says: “No one is addicted to their phone and everyone just goes out, whereas now everyone’s addicted to their phones.” Elliott Rose (the dependable Julian) hopes the show will “inspire people, specifically younger audiences, to go outside and have an adventure”.
However, 2023’s version does include some magic realism and edginess. Winding Refn says the music gives it a “cotton candy vibe”, plus the show’s “sense of fashion” helps make it “relevant to today’s young children”.
But the three 90-minute specials also contain menace and mystery, thanks mostly to Game of Thrones star Jack Gleeson. He was cast as the Moriarty-style villain Thomas Wentworth partly because he reminded the producers of evil characters from 1940s films. In fact, his sinister ways were so convincing that when Wentworth locked the Famous Five in an ancient tomb, the actors say they felt genuinely scared.
Read says the Blyton estate has been “very supportive” of the show. Young audiences may snigger at the character names Fanny and Dick, but Winding Refn and Read are not distracted by culture wars around period authors’ language (most recently Roald Dahl hit the headlines after his books were updated) and do not engage with questions about it.
While their creation’s language is not at the level satirised in Channel 4’s The Comic Strip Presents … comedies Five Go Mad in Dorset and Five Go Mad on Mescalin in the 1980s, there are nods to the past. Flora Jacoby Richardson, who plays Anne, explains: “I had to say ‘Oh, my goodness’ instead of ‘Oh my God’”.
Gender politics and identity have progressed since Blyton created “tomboy” character George. Diaana Babnicova, who plays her, says she and Read “had a lot of conversations” about gender, and while “we wanted to make sure that bit was still part of George … there are other traits that are more exciting”.
Winding Refn says: “If there’s ever a message in our version of The Famous Five, it’s to celebrate individualism. And in a way not conform – not be part of what everybody else expects you to do or how to behave.
“What’s so great about being normal? George is very inspired by my youngest daughter who has this notion of: ‘Why do I have to conform? Why do I have to be what everyone tells me to be?’ If I were to tell any child what they should look out for in the world, it’s to never not be themselves.”
Blyton’s 21 original books are used as the basis for the three new episodes – with elements added from myth and history. The Christmas special, The Curse of Kirrin Island, features a story based around the Knights Templar, lost treasure and an inscribed goblet. But there is also lots of humour, provided particularly by henchman Boswell and a nod to the Famous Five’s obsession with ginger beer. No word yet on whether lashings of it will be available as Famous Five merchandise.
Filming took place in Cornwall and Wales, which look so stunningly sunny Jacoby Richardson says “it looks as if we were staying in Greece!” Babnicova agrees it was “like a real-life version of Mamma Mia!” and she and Jacoby Richardson performed dance routines between takes.
Bearded collie cross Kip has a starring role as Timmy and behaved well, except when nature called – Babnicova remembers how he refused to eat some biscuits in one scene because he needed the loo.
But Winding Refn is keen to dispel the “disrespectful” TV maxim about never working with children or animals. “The naturalness, spontaneity and just loving every day, loving to go to work – you don’t get a lot of actors like that. Having four kids and a dog is a best-case scenario!
“So many times, anything to do with children can feel like secondary material, something just there to assault their senses … to keep them occupied. Which is a horrible thing, because our children are the most important thing in the world – they’re supposed to make the world a better place for us.”
Read adds: “Grownups have messed the world up. We need children to stand up for themselves and The Famous Five has that message at its heart.”
Winding Refn also wants the show to appeal to adults, “because we’re also children when we turn on the television or read a good book. We too go on adventures; we’re just taught to be more proper about it – which is really boring.”
The Famous Five: The Curse of Kirrin Island is on CBBC and iPlayer on 9 December and on BBC One on New Year’s Eve.
