When Enid Blyton wrote the schoolgirl series Malory Towers after the second world war she injected tales of hope and camaraderie into it to reflect a Britain coming together after a time of crisis.
Now the BBC hopes its modern adaptation of the boarding school adventures of 12-year-old Darrell Rivers will do the same and it has brought the programme forward by a fortnight to Monday as a boost for children missing their final week of school because of the coronavirus.
Although TV’s first adaption of Malory Towers is set in the late 1940s, it has been brought up to date with an ethnically, socially and visually diverse cast and contains many themes relevant to today’s audience.
Sasha Hails and Rachel Flowerday, who adapted the books for the 13-part TV show, said it has a particular resonance in the current climate.
“It feels like absolutely the right time to tell it … as part of the exploration of our times,” said Hails.
She said despite Malory Towers being about schoolgirls: “This is a show for families, kids can watch it with their parents and grandparents; they’re universal stories.”
The rise of the #MeToo movement also makes the time right for Malory Towers, as Flowerday explained.
“There’s a brilliant quiet feminism in the books and we wanted to draw on that. It was so liberating and exciting writing a show where nearly every character on screen nearly all of the time is female.
“It’s really powerful we’re able to do that; we’re at a place in the world where people will sit down, we hope, and watch it. Almost every scene passes the Bechdel test!”
Zoey Siewert, who plays prankster Alicia Johns, added: “Most of the cast is girls and women and I love that because there’s not a lot of women who are main roles in shows these days.”
Her co-star Ella Bright, who plays Rivers, said her character was “quite a feminist role model”, which was “a good message for young children, especially young girls”.
Although Blyton has been criticised in the past for not being relevant, producer Grainne McNamara said: “Actually Blyton is quite progressive in her thinking … the way she represented those girls in the school is you can go out and be anything and do anything you want, and I think the TV series has really tried to lift that out of the book and focus on it.”
The show has kept the fun, midnight feast and tricks from the books but does not shy away from darker themes such as bullying, loss and vaccinations. The TV version has introduced new characters and ideas such as dyslexia but overall it has what McNamara called “a warm sunny feel” making it like “Downton Abbey for children”.
Filmed in Canada and on location in Cornwall and at Devon country house, Hartland Abbey, McNamara said: “It looks like the Railway Children; we’ve consciously made it like that [so] you’d want to go there. We want every viewer to want to go to Malory Towers and feel they want to be Darrell Rivers or Gwen or whoever.”
More diverse characters have also been introduced as Hails explained: “We obviously wanted a diverse cast, as did the BBC, to represent our viewers of today but we wanted it to be authentic. Once we dug in it was quite clear that Britain has been more diverse than it’s often accounted for.”
With 500m worldwide sales of Blyton’s books, there has been global interest in the series, which is being co-produced by David Walliams’ company King Bert and Canadian company WildBrain. Flowerday admitted they felt the pressure to get it right: “It was really important that we did it justice and the cast and crew have done that.”
McNamara said “sackloads of mail” had been sent to King Bert by fans of the books, “people are just so excited about it. I think it’s that real nostalgia for it”.
Danya Griver, who plays Gwendoline Mary Lacey, said many of the themes in the six Malory Towers books were relevant to children today: “It’s good to see things don’t always go to plan; life is great and you must always treasure the things that go well but sometimes they don’t and I think it’s important for people to see if they’ve gone through a bad time they’re not the only one.”
This Country star Ashley McGuire, who plays Matron, said despite the modernisations: “We do try to stay faithful to how they would have talked.
“The sensibilities in those books are things we still look for today; they’ve got a comradeship … they fight for one another; they’ve got good values. Some things are very different but it’s not a million miles away from how we want our children to enjoy school and one another. They take care of each other.”
Malory Towers will air on BBC iPlayer from Monday and on CBBC in April.
