Malory Towers BBC series: review

Tough times lead many of us to seek nostalgia trips - and what could be more nostalgic than Enid Blyton, and the BBC's recent adaptation of her Malory Towers series, dubbed "Downton for kids"? As a long-time Blyton fan, I figured lockdown was the perfect time for this trip down memory lane.

Despite instances of occasionally overdramatic acting (such as when Gwen falls into the water), on the whole the quality of the acting - from both children and adults - is superb. The Downton distinction is also well-founded: the grand setting immediately and beautifully evokes Blyton's stately boarding schools from times gone by. The overall sense of mischief, so integral to the series, is also generally successfully created. 

However, the script for the series is fundamentally flawed. Despite Darrell's shortcomings, she is not this bad so soon in the term, or believed to be by members of staff. In the same way, Gwendolyn is not this manipulative (for example, in the incident pertaining to the French prep), the Matron was never this nasty, and Alicia never so loud. In this way some characters become unrealistic caricatures rather than the realistic renderings that Blyton originally created.

Alicia's character, in fact, has been altered in ways that deeply discredit the script. Adding her as an American character (when this was not the case in the original text) adds incongruous (dare I say unfortunate) Americanisms - e.g. "mail" - to the script. This might be forgivable if the Americanisms were only spoken by an American character, but even Gwen says about "acing" a test. The girls' whooping is also thoroughly Americanised and not at all faithful to the time period in which Blyton's original stories were set. If the unnecessary character of the errand boy had not been added (who was only superficially sketched in, in any event, but still wasted valuable minutes), then time need not have been sacrificed on genuine characterisation of the protagonists and antagonist as opposed to insertion of further inferior invention.

Similarly the addition of the 'back story' of Darrell being allegedly asked to leave St Hilda's is unnecessary. Blyton's already strong story does not require such inferior embellishment. One effective addition, however, is Gwen running into the village by herself to make a malicious phone call, as this is far more in keeping with Blyton's original characterisation of her (which regularly sees Gwen cutting off her nose to spite her face).

Overall, the series lacked thorough historical, educational, and linguistic consultation. As well as Darrell's dyslexia (or "word blindness", as the series describes it) being thoroughly invented, learning difficulties were simply not well understood enough in Blyton's time to attract diagnoses (even informal ones). Darrell is also shown to be writing in print, rather than cursive, which simply never would have happened in 1940s Britain. 

Had Darrell really had dyslexia, Blyton would certainly have used it as a feature of her stories in order for children to learn from this. In the same way, a character with a facial disfigurement is added, but this is not part of any storyline - even though it would have been rare enough in Blyton's time (as now) to have been a talking point and as such, a learning experience. A black member of staff would also have been unlikely in this period (in general the BAME-ing of the cast seems to have been done for modern diversity reasons rather than reflecting the society of 1940s Britain), and again, would have been sufficiently unusual to prove a talking point in the original stories. 

The series also makes overt comments pertaining to World War 2; this, along with the débutante storyline particularly, was equally unnecessary. Blyton's strength is in her escapist, timeless setting; it is this, and not the post-war situation in which she was writing, that makes the stories still popular today.

Arguably the series does overly compress the drama compared to the books - though this is arguably a failing of many literary adaptations. The length of the episodes generally works well for the intended audience (which I recognise I am not part of!) and made for accessible, easy viewing.

As such, despite the criticisms above, continued series based on the subsequent books would be most gratefully received, and even more so with the recommended alterations. Nostalgia is what we all need right now - and, Blyton fangirl that I am, I'll take anything that's coming to me, perfect or no.