The Chalet School (Radio 4) was what you might call a "quest documentary". Our host, crime writer Val McDermid, credits the Chalet School stories of her childhood with inspiring her to forge a career as a novelist, and so sets out to discover how tales of wealthy boarding-school girls in the Austrian mountains had such a profound effect on her, when, as she puts it, "the world of the Chalet School couldn't have been more different from my working-class childhood in the Scottish coalfields".

McDermid talks to several fellow fans about their theories on the books' success. These range from their aspirational message – "the books focused on women being able to do everything" – to the author's decision to have the stories engage directly with the Nazi occupation, as seen in McDermid's favourite The Chalet School in Exile, which she gives to three 10-year-old newcomers to the series to see what girls would make of it now.

The value of their insight is debatable. "If you're hiking up and down a mountain and running away from Nazis," says one girl, asked what she's learned from the book, "it might hurt your foot." There's a pause and what sounds like a stifled laugh from our host. "That's ... very ... true." It's hardly rigorous literary criticism, but it is quite sweet.