Malory Towers TV series

[Anita Bensoussane]

I enjoyed the episodes too and I agree that the acting is of a very high standard.

[Carmen Kirrin]

Yes they chose a diverse cast to be politically correct rather than historically accurate, also no prayers before meals because of course, that might offend a non-christian, and the nice girls have 21st century feminist opinions. Also, no standing up when the teacher comes in the room, etc. etc. It doesn't feel like the 1940s at all. This might not bother everyone, but it bothers me because I love period drama's and I think historical accuracy is important.

Hi, I hope you don’t mind my responding to your comment so much longer after it was posted. Only it spurred me to actually create an account after lurking on this forum on and off for years, since 2008 at the very least. I am a life long Blyton fan, and close to your own age I believe, as I am 25. My parents have an interracial marriage and yet raised my sisters and I to be particularly conservative (we are fundamentalist Christians as well, so are quite traditional morally anyway) and were very eager to inform us (wrongly) that whenever we saw someone black or Asian or quite simply not white on television that it was because of ‘political correctness gone mad’. Racism was only ever ‘the n-word’ and ‘slavery’ and otherwise did not exist, and black people ‘had a chip on their shoulder’ (bearing in mind my mother is black Caribbean and her parents came to the U.K. as part of the Windrush generation). They were fans of UKIP before it was well known -many years before Brexit- and would watch clips of Nigel Farage together, egging him on during clips of his speeches and their general sentiment was that ideally, someday, ‘immigrants and people trying to take over our country’ would be sent back to where they came from. I didn’t even realise I was black myself or ethnically mixed-race until I was four, simply because we never discussed race. However, at four I could already read as I’d been a lover of books -albeit mostly picture books or with very little text- all my short life (grew up reading the King James Version of the Bible -repeating the words after my parents- from 2 and had always had nightly bed time stories) and received my first Blyton whilst in reception and still 4. One of my parents was a great lover of Blyton as a child, and still is, I believe, and she encouraged my love for her. So no one was more shocked than I when a series of life experiences showed me racism is alive and well, and representation is incredibly important. At one time I would have cried tears of fury at seeing ‘coloured people’ and ‘half-caste girls’ (language I was raised with) cast in my beloved Malory Towers. As it is, I very much enjoy watching and pausing every few moments to scream at the screen that “Matron would never *say* that!” or “That’s not Alicia’s character at all!” and have a love-hate relationship with the programme. My point is, why not dislike the show for some of its creative choices for the storylines, or characterisations? In 2023, to be upset over the race of a character is rather sad, I genuinely am saddened when I come across this -as I remember the feeling so well and was so very wrong. As previous posters here have informed you, non-white students were more commonplace in decades gone by than you might think. As for not finding evidence of this in photographs -given attitudes at the time, this is hardly surprising, is it? Again, as previous comments have said, they have their own experiences of friends or family members recollecting black or Asian pupils during their (or perhaps their parents’ or grandparents’) time at schools many years ago. I hear what you are saying about what your own family has told you, but that is simply anecdotal evidence -although I do realise I just said other comments have described similar anecdotes, however there have also been other comments mentioning historically informative books that depicted school demographics in the 1940s, 50s, 60s as well as times previous and following, which would support the fact that there were none white pupils, even in upper-middle class institutions more similar to Malory Towers or St. Clare’s. But in regards to our own experiences, my grandmother, born in 1920 into a working class Lancashire family, accepted a black person marrying into her family, and has never said a negative or racist thing about it in twenty-eight years (of course I can’t guarantee she never expressed a racist sentiment -or anything that could be seen as such- before this or even unintentionally since, as we all have biases and must work on them). Which is why I don’t have much patience with the ‘they’re from a different time’ thing, beyond the initial newness of coming into contact with someone from a different background to yourself, it came down to whether you were a decent enough person to at least be kind, I realise it would have been a lot to think to even challenge biases at the time. As for the ‘different generation’ excuse now, unless they’re as old as my 102 year-old grandmother, it’s a cop-out. When my father says racist things, there’s no excuse as he was born in the 50s and has never known a Britain without sizeable black, asian and other ethnic minority communities. The same goes for my mother born in the late 60s, no excuse. As for for you and I, it’s a conscious choice to be discriminatory and bigoted at this point. So really, after we examine any prejudice or bias we may hold, there is no reason at all to have an issue with the casting. Of course, it depends on whether the casting is colourblind or is a choice to make a character another race. As previous comments have said, Sally’s colour, or Ellen’s or the colour of any other character has not affected their characterisation thus far. It appears to be simply a colourblind casting choice. Whereas, if every other character were to be another race (this is of course acknowledging that we always assume ‘white’ as the ‘default’ and there is actual literary theory on this that is applied in textual analysis of adaptational screenplays, novels and plays in academic settings, and more than happy to send you some old university essays on that) or ethnic minority (for the sake of representation, which works well in contemporary media, but is often more historically inaccurate in period pieces) that would be a touch more unlikely in a 1940s British all-girls’ boarding school. But please, if we could try to open our minds a little more and challenge the assumptions and biases we hold as well as embracing ethically diverse casts in Blyton adaptations, we not only help ourselves but stick it to the crowd that insist Enid belongs to the past and are looking for any reason to ban her from libraries or confine her to history *cough* BBC *cough*. I have always insisted, during my internalised racism years and after, that any evidence of prejudice found in Blyton was indicative of views at the time and not representative of any particular prejudice on her part. Always maintained you’ll tear my Blytons from my cold dead hands. But reading through this thread I am surprised and pleased the read that the understanding of Enid’s stance on these matters is different to have it might once have been! I apologise for the length of this message, this is actually after I cut out a lot of what I’d have been happy to waffle on about for lines and lines! Again, I hope I don’t come across as hostile or patronising when I myself used to hold the views you do now (only, if I may be so presumptuous, to a more extreme degree).

[Anita Bensoussane]

Welcome to the forums, Carmen - though you probably feel quite at home here already if you've been looking in, on and off, for about 15 years!

I tend to agree with you about the casting being colourblind, rather than the races of various characters having been decided in advance. As Dsr said in a post a few months ago:

I think we're slightly missing the point about the black girls in the TV series. There aren't any black characters per se, there are just characters who may happen to be played by people with dark skin. The point of colourblind casting is that if Sally is played by a black girl, it doesn't mean that the producers have decided that Sally should be black, but more that they have decided that the actress playing Sally is best for the job and her skin tone is irrelevant. (Imagine it with hair colour, if you like. If Philip in the Adventure series is played by a boy who doesn't have tufty hair, it doesn't mean that the producers have decided EB was wrong about the hair, just that it was more convenient to have an un-tufty boy playing him.)

Anyone remember Brinsley Forde (later of Aswad), in The Double Deckers? Apparently he was the first ever black actor on British TV to play a character where being black wasn't part of his character. He wasn't there to be black, he was there to be a human being. That's how I see these Malory Towers castings - being black isn't part of their character, except superficially.

Whether colourblind casting really works, that's another issue. It's pretty much universal on stage now, though a production of Othello where Iago's wife was played by a black woman was perhaps a step too far! And of course there are the ultra-purists who won't have it at all, such as the Bristol University students who wouldn't perform Aida because there weren't enough black singers to play the slaves and they couldn't bear to have white people playing slaves.

Bridgerton did colourblind casting too, I believe. (I never saw it.)

I've seen a lot of musicals in London and elsewhere over the years, and it's quite common for biological parents and children in a play (or biological siblings) to be of different races. I've also seen a character played by an actor of one race when the character is a child, but an actor of another race when the character is an adult. As Dsr says, the best actor is cast, with skin tone being irrelevant. Of course, an exception would be when race is important to the storyline, e.g. in a production of To Kill a Mockingbird.

[Fiona1986]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences, Carmen.

[jubei]

oh wow.. looking forward for watching this soon. A modern production of Enid Blyton sounds very exciting.

just a quick question, in percentage how faithful are they with the original books?

[Anita Bensoussane]

It's hard to give a percentage, Jubei. Series 1 stays closest to the book but it's quite long (13 episodes) so a lot of material has been added, and some things which have been taken from the book are presented in a different way. Series 2 and 3 deviate from the books much more and there's also a specially-written Christmas special consisting of two episodes. The girls have been cast wonderfully well in my opinion (especially Darrell, Gwendoline, Sally, Mary-Lou and Ellen) and I love the locations and sets. Some of the storylines are hard to swallow at times but the main characters are so delightfully portrayed that they keep me watching. I believe Series 4 is due out later this year.

[jubei]

thanks Anita. I have very fatigue memory on Malory books, so the originality not much an issue then.

I am on Episode 7 last night. I agree this series are really good. The earlier episodes (1-3) are quite slow, but once reaching the 4th and as soon as we familiar with the character/casts, the show kick off immediately. I watched with my daughter who quickly attached to it, she is big fans of Wednesday series so this is somehow grab her attention. I probably just watching on the fly for latter episodes. This is of course better for kid to teenage audience.

Scenery are good.

This is my first time watching lacrosse game (I should search them on Youtube, I wonder why I never done it). I surprised that the referee are the coach from each side? is this real?

[GloomyGraham]

\surprised that the referee are the coach from each side? is this real?

For any sports matches between schools, the officials would be the sports teachers (they probably didn't consider themselves as coaches). This probably still happens.

For sports contests requiring more than a few officials (eg swimming or athletics where performances needed to be timed or measured) students often took some roles as well.

[timv]

From my own school experience in the 1970s, referees for inter-school ball sports matches (rugby, hockey, football) were usually either the schools' sports masters/ mistresses or a non-sports teacher (or occasionally a parent) who had some knowledge of the relevant sport. (At my secondary school when hockey was introduced for boys, against the ex-rugby player Headmaster's wishes, none of the male sports teachers were experienced at it so another teacher who had played it at college was called in to coach when available.) At swimming sports tournaments, non-sports teachers and senior pupils were also called on to note the results and the times of those racing - usually led by the current boys' and girls' games captains.

In various school books and comics stories which I encountered, and Enid-era (1930s to early 1960s) school stories which I have studied, there is also a heavy reliance for assistance in sports coaching (out of teaching hours) and match work, as linesmen and occasionally as referees, on the most senior 'sporty' pupils, usually 17 to 18 year old prefects. Hence a large number of stories featuring the risks when they were biased . Both Dorita Fairlie Bruce's 1920s-1930s 'Dimsie' books and Elinor Brent Dyer's Chalet School books by the 1950s-60s featured problems with bad-tempered and biased Games Prefects who tried to undermine teams or individuals, as did others (eg Antonia Forest's crooked Games Captain Lois Sanger targeting Nicola Marlow).
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[jubei]

thanks for replies guys. Ah I see, for friendly match of course the official are shared between the two side participating. I also remember none of my schools sports events involved external (professional) officials. Unless it is a scoring system competition (gymnastic, singing competition) I guess professional judge are needed.

It just the scene from episode 7 between sports teacher from St Hilda and Malory Towers that bewildered me. Meanwhile , I like the back-story of Darrel Rivers began to revealed.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I'm glad you and your daughter are enjoying Series 1, Jubei.

[Viv of Ginger Pop]

Here is a story-line that is bound to be picked up by the authors of the tv series

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjeZkqRP0zc

[Katharine]

I've only seen odd bits of the programme, and haven't enjoyed it, mostly because I think it's historically inaccurate and doesn't stick to the books very much.

The other week I saw another bit and was disgusted. I don't know what the plot line was supposed to be, but it featured the rear end of a horse with digestive problems which saw a member of staff being sprayed with something that I will politely describe as fresh manure! I find any sort of toilet humour in bad taste anyway, but to see it linked with Enid Blyton's name/books I felt was an insult to her.

If the only way to keep her name in the public eye is to sink to such a gutter level, then I'd rather her books go out of print!

[Wolfgang]

Actually Thunder had colic in "Third year at Malory Towers", and the teacher who received Thunder's gift in the film did her best to prevent getting help for Thunder.

[Katharine]

Yes, that's very true, but from what I recall of the book, the colic was just described as being a painful tummy with rumbling noises. Enid as far as I recall never mentioned anything in graphic details regarding bodily functions.

Also, didn't the book version have a teacher showing sympathy to the horse and getting the vet?