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.

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'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.

Thought I would do a slightly less "web warrior" review to stand alongside the others. This was the first in a long series of shows and is one of the best. It did get quite a bit of notoriety on transmission partly due to it's chosen subject of the Famous Five and being the nascent genre of alternative comedy. It was produced and broadcast with the approval of the Enid Blyton estate so if anything proved they had a sense of humour.

The main joke is, of course, four obviously grown adults pretending to be innocent pre-teen children on an impossibly naive, anachronistic adventure. The book series started in wartime 1942 and was nostalgic even then so although reviewers have said it was set in the 1950's a more accurate description would be pre-war England. That also adds to the humour since nobody in 1982 spoke or behaved that way so with the cast hamming it up extensively it certainly found a chord with rebellious teenagers / young adults which is what the series aimed at.

It did cause a stir when broadcast as the book series was popular and fondly remembered by many and was still being read and dramatized up to the late seventies. It wasn't the first programme broadcast on C4 (that was the first episode of Countdown) but it was on the first night and the whole nation did not tune in expecting to see a faithful reproduction of the books (the title gave that away). However many of the jokes became part of the school children's staple humour of the time.

To get most of the jokes you really have to be familiar with the books and their tone to see why jokes about 'George' possibly being a lesbian (actually based on Enid Blyton's tomboyish childhood) , Dick being a closet homosexual (can't remember that from the books), Anne being a 'wet' girl & Julian being unbearably precocious hit their mark. Also the hilariously dumb & inept criminals and Uncle Quentin (who was a genuine character in the books) turning out to be not quite as 'in love' with his wife Aunt Fanny as you would expect (again no link with the actual books) are funny in their own right without any need to justify them with political correctness.

The other episodes of similar calibre (in my opinion) are "A Fistful of Travellers Cheques", "Strike". "Bad News Tour" & "More Bad News". Probably the biggest ironic joke of them all is that having started out as daring "Alternative Comedy" the genre, this series (and cast) became the new "Mainstream Comedy" and to be subversive and daring in 2021 all you actually have to do now is watch episodes of any sixties / seventies comedy series which was then considered innocuous tea time entertainment.

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.