Five Go Mad in Dorset

The famous five go on holidays and happen upon a criminal conspiracy.

This is a strong start to the Comic Strip series with an iconic satire of Enid Blyton.

The tone of the episode and performances of all cast are perfect for what it's trying to achieve, which is not only ripping the values of it's source material to shreds, but also the style in which the stories are presented on television. It does it with some darkly funny and shocking little moments of racism, sexism, homophobia and bestiality.

All performers are on over-the-top form with purposely wooden acting styles that compliment the low-budget production values quite well. Watching it in post-brexit Britain is as relevant now as it ever was.

I've loved this show since first seeing it in 1982. As a kid, the childish jokes were simply funny. Later, the way it poked fun at some of the snobbish attitudes of the 50s also became more apparent and just as hilarious.

The absurd mix of adults playing kids out camping and doing childish things (while investigating crimes) works perfectly. In spite of the scathing humour, there is still a nostalgic element to it - going cycling and camping and picnicking in the lovely old English countryside looks fun!

As well as the main cast, there are some great cameos including Robbie Coltrane, and the inspired inclusion of Ronald Allen as the sinister Uncle Quentin - a big surprise for those of us used to seeing him as David Hunter on Crossroads at the time.

The first episode of this great series is a parody of a 1970s children's show that was based on a series of children's books from the 1940s, The Famous Five.The Famous Five is(was) apparently very beloved in the UK, which made it a great target for some alternative comedians who love to make fun of anything wholesome.Normally, if you aren't familiar with the original, a parody loses a lot of its comedy.I don't think that's true for this episode(or the later two).I never saw The Famous Five but before I wrote this I was able to choke down thirty seconds of it on youtube.Shockingly, the parody of George was way too feminine.If I hadn't seen the parody, I would have never believed it was a girl(she actually looks like Danny Peacock).But you really don't need to see the original.You will see from this episode that the original was utter trash that needed to be parodied.You will get that The Famous Five was a ridiculous idea, even for children.This episode was the very first thing to ever air on Channel 4 and it caused quite a controversy when an entire country tuned in only to see a national treasure get destroyed.The Comic Strip set the bar very high with this episode.It's no surprise that they couldn't always live up to it.

I watched this on the opening night of Channel 4 back in 1982.

I think some viewers actually expected to see an episode of Enid Blyton's The Famous Five and had no idea who The Comic Strip were.

This may had been the first time people saw the alternative comedians of the 1980s such as Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders and Adrian Edmondson.

It is a biting parody of the Enid Blyton books. I used to read The Famous Five stories voraciously as a kid and even then I had an inkling that something was not right. Foreigners in the stories were strange, untrustworthy and usually were villainous.

Set in the 1950s, The Famous Five go to Dorset to stay with Aunt Fanny, but Uncle Quentin, a scientist has been kidnapped again.

On a cycling trip, they keep bumping into two thugs who seem to have recently left jail and bump into snivelling rude posh boy Toby Thurlow.

The clues take them to a strange house and a trail of jars of Vaseline. Julian thinks it is all very queer. Things get slippier and slippier with lashings of ginger beer.

The parody has it all. Robbie Coltrane playing a strange gypsy. The police quickly arrest the porter from the train station who is black.

George is blatantly called a dyke by Toby. I am sure she really wants to transition to be a boy. Dick is a closet gay. Everyone tells Anne that she will make someone a perfect housewife one day and Julian is mature for his age because he looks about 30.

The final surprise for viewers was when Ronald Allen (then famous for the ITV soap opera Crossroads) enters as Uncle Quentin and reveals himself as a raging homosexual. I guess the clue was in the name Quentin. Before Tarantino it was associated with Crisp.

The Comic Strip films blew hot and cold for me. Peter Richardson the main creative force behind them was variable in the quality of the output. This was a sharp parody with even some affection for the source material.

Of course, it's still somewhat funny.

But I'm afraid it's all rather depressing.

The revealing of the misogynist, paternalistic, patronizing and racist attitudes, in the satirized story is so sharp, that what once was covered up by love for the series now rears it's ugly head.

For example, when Dick says "Anne is *just* a girl, but she's still capable of doing this and that", or when the shopkeeper is fully submissive, one realizes that this isn't a gross distortion of of the books themselves. In fact it's hardly a distortion at all. And these attitudes are recurring frequently throughout the books.

Then again one could revel in the fact that all these outdated opinions and attitudes are firmly in the past, as opposed to getting mad that it was so bad just 30 years ago.

We really could take the brighter since here, and consider how nice that those despicable attitudes {the anti-feminism, the supremacy of upper-middle class {the children} over lower-middle class {the shopkeeper}) are a thing of the past.

We could. But maybe we shouldn't.