Five Go to the Twenty-First Century

ENID BLYTON! Famous Five, Disney Channel, 10.30am

Whenever there’s adventure to be found, just a clue or a secret message bring the Famous Five around. They are the Famous Five: Julian, Dick and Anne, George and Timmy the do-o-o-og. Ah, happy days. I am doing my reputation precisely no favours by admitting that not only was I a fanatic reader of the Famous Five books when I was about ten years old (and possibly a bit beyond), but I also went out and bought all the VHSes of the 1978 TV series that I could lay my hands on. Feel free to point and laugh. Though this does seem to be as good a point as any to insert a gratuitous YouTube clip:

There was another remake in 1996, which was also fairly faithful. But at the risk of turning into one of those pearl-clutching nightmares who repeatedly insists that his childhood memories are being horrifically violated by a new adaptation, the new version starting today on the Disney Channel does sound a little bit worrying.

For starters, it’s not the actual Famous Five at all; they’ve all grown up and had children (mercifully not with each other), and it’s now their offspring who are off on adventures down mineshafts and taking lashings and lashings of ginger beer Red Bull with them. They seem to fulfil largely the same roles in the story as their elders, since Julian’s son Max is the de facto leader, George’s daughter is the tomboy, Anne’s daughter is the girlie one, and so on. (The dog is still Timmy, though I’m assuming not Famous Original Timmy, as he’s probably a bit arthritic by now, and weeing on the carpet and that sort of thing.)

There are some nice ideas with the new characters (George’s daughter is mixed-race, which ups the show’s diversity quota in a way that isn’t too contrived or offensive) and some less nice ones (Anne apparently moved to America to be an art dealer, so her daughter has been created as a California airhead in a transparent attempt to appeal to the transatlantic market, sigh), and while my initial reaction to visiting the website may have been along the lines of “oh dear God, what the shit is this?”, it’s nice to know that the whole concept is still popular enough to justify any kind of adaptation.

That said, I’m basing all of this on having not seen a full episode yet. And if the whole thing turns out to be a low-rent Scooby Doo with an Enid Blyton licence attached, I shall not be held responsible for my actions. Thank you for your time; you may resume pointing and laughing at me now.

Family Mis Four-tunes

NOT-SO-NEW! The Simpsons, Channel 4, 4.40pm, and weekdays, 6.00pm

When Channel 4 acquired the terrestrial rights to The Simpsons it seemed like a reasonable move. They would be showing repeats at 6.00pm daily, much like BBC Two had done before them, with new-to-terrestrial episodes on Fridays at 9.00pm, to replace Friends. That move lasted for one season of episodes before the network started to treat the show like its slightly embarassing younger sibling, shoving any old repeat on at tea-time or A Sunday and only very occasionally flinging on new-to-terrestrial shows, generally with no publicity whatsoever (the last time they showed some was on a Sunday lunchtime only).

Today, they show some new-to-terrestrial episodes for the first time in ages, and they will be continuing showing them throughout the week, and presumably over the next couple of weeks, too (although given their treatment of the show, we wouldn’t count on it). I thought you should know, in case, like me, you han’t bothered watching for ages because you couldn’t face yet another repeat of the episode where they have that picnic at Burns’ mansion. (Oh, and bizarrely, there is an episode at 4.10 today, but instead of it being a ‘new’ one, it’s just the eight billionth repeat of the one with the babysitter bandit). I know that the show has the reputation of having gone off the boil a bit in recent years, but we terrestrial viewers who haven’t got to see recent episodes wouldn’t know, would we?

When BBC2 were showing The Simpsons they ended up just two years behind Sky. Channel 4 have done such a good job with it that they are now five years behind Sky, with this being the 2003 season. This is the season that includes JK Rowling, Sir Ian McKellen and Tony Blair, you know, very much the Prime Minister back then in ‘The Regina Monologues’ (Wednesday’s showing), an episode that even those of us without Sky have probably seen by now. Ricky Gervais’ episode from 2006 is presumably estimated to hit terrestrial television in 2014.

Let us clay

SCREAM! Clay, BBC One, 3.30pm

You know how they don’t make Sunday afternoon family telly like they used to in our day? Some of us may well be more than happy with the More4 Sunday afternoon of coooking greatness Come Dine With Me, Jame at Home and whatever River Cottage programme is on that week, but won’t somebody please think of the children? And the non-foodies?

Well, today they have. Clay is one of those dramas that would feel more at home on a Bank Holiday, perhaps, but it’s nonetheless a welcome addition to a lacklustre “big five channels” Sunday afternoon schedule.

Starring Imelda Staunton, which is always reason enough to preview anything, it is a ‘family’ drama based on a ‘best-selling’ (we haven’t heard of it, but then we were twelve a very long time ago) book by David Almond. The story is set in Tyneside in the 1960s and features a boy called Davie Hagan making friends with a strange man, Stephen Rose who has been expelled from priesthood training. Imelda plays Davie’s auntie.

Stephen has a ‘talent’ for making life-like clay models and one day he makes one that appears to be very life-like and has been made with the intention of obeying its creators. That surely can’t be a good thing…

Big Fat Last Sunday of the Year

WIZARDRY! JK Rowling: A Year in the Life, ITV1, 7pm

QUIZARDRY! The Big Fat Quiz of the Year, Channel 4, 9pm
We have to say, in terms of books, 2007 was a disappointment. We didn’t much rate the latest by Nick Horby, Alice Sebold or Armistead Maupin and we are still on the waiting list at the library for this year’s Booker winner. Perhaps everyone else was too scared of the competition of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which at the time, felt like an event akin to the second coming. Or at least Kylie Who. Although now the moment has passed it’s easy to forget all the fuss, as it feels so long ago (much like Christmas, really). The book itself created one of the biggest ever sweepy wins on the forums (because there were so many deaths, although not Neville, which we feel a bit cheated by as we were sure he was a dead cert) and a fairly mixed response, although we loved it.

Anyway, in a crowd pleasing move, ITV is giving us a fly on the wall documentary of JK Rowling’s life as she finishes book seven, gets it published, is asked a billion times what she will do next, and outs Dumbledore. We don’t imagine we’ll get to see her reaction to not being made a Dame in the New Year’s Honours, when Jacqueline Wilson was, though. Shame.

Whilst we are mentioning kids’ books (or sort of), a quick nod to The Shadow in the North at 8:55pm on BBC1. Starring Billie Piper, it’s the second adaptation of Philip Pullman’s Sally Lockhart books. But we haven’t read any of them, nor did we watch the first part last year, and a quick trawl of the forums shows no-one else seems to have, either. Still, it’s there if you want it, and we know a few of you love some costume drama action.

The main event of the evening, and the one which will no doubt lead to the last mass drinking session in the chat room of 2007, is the annual Big Fat Quiz of the Year, where the token non-comedian, non-man this year is Lily Allen (we said it at Comic Relief, we’ll say it again, there are plenty of female comedians out there, you know. Give some of them some work!), joining David Mitchell, Jonathan Ross, Rob Brydon, Noel Fielding and Russell Brand (wot no Myleene Klass, John Barrowman or Adrian Chiles?). We loved Noel and Russell on this last year, although they hadn’t been on our screens as non-stop as they have been this year, so it remains to be seen if they are endearing again this time round, or if they’ve become annoying.

Nonetheless, this show always produces loads of laughs and is also a bit easier than the nasty quizzes you get in the newspapers at this time of year, of which we can only answer about 5%, so it helps us feel a bit superior.

This is followed at 11:05 by a repeat of the last episode of series 4 of Shameless in preparation for the new series, which starts on the 1st. Join us tomorrow as we preview it in our Old Year/New Year double bumper edition…

Adventures in Time and Space