I ordered the DVD of The Enid Blyton Adventure Series from the UK. It's only available in a PAL DVD. I was interested in it because the Adventure Series is my favorite of Enid's nearly countless books. There are 8 books in the series and the first one came out in 1944. Here's the list from the Wikipedia.
- The Island of Adventure 1944 AKA Mystery Island (US, 1945)
- The Castle of Adventure 1946
- The Valley of Adventure 1947
- The Sea of Adventure 1948
- The Mountain of Adventure 1949
- The Ship of Adventure 1950
Originally, the series was supposed to end after this episode, but under the great demand of dedicated fans, Blyton wrote two more episodes:
I read the books as a teen. I got them from the library and read them a couple of times each. I might have had personal copies of my own but if I did they went in the big purge that happened when I moved out of town just as I turned 25. After I had read the first 3 Harry Potter books I had been visiting Winnipeg. As i was preparing for the trip I had gotten to thinking that I should look and see if the Adventure books are still in print in Canada. They aren't in print in the US for the most part. Hardly anything of Enid's is available here unless it's an import. The HP books reminded me of the Blyton books in some way and I wanted to re-read them again. Sure enough they had a set at one of the bookstores and I picked them up. I started right away, read them all in one big gulp, and really enjoyed them. It was like I was reading them for the first time. It had been 40 or so years since I had last read any of them and I had forgotten all the details. It's about about 10 years since I re-read the series and it seems like I should read them again, especially now that I've seen the 1996 TV series.
The stories were originally televised in 24 half hour slots. Each of the eight books had three episodes to tell the story. The DVDs have the 3 episodes and edit them into a 75 minute movie. They've kept the basic plot from each book but moved it into the mid 1990s. It doesn't hurt the stories any. Oddly, there were novelizations of the TV versions that came out in 1997. I didn't know about those but I don't think I want to spend the money to order them. I can't imagine they'd be expensive but I suspect that they aren't as good, or as entertaining, as the original. Not that I think there's much point in reading them. Read the originals.
That's the Mannering house, Craggy-Tops, in what's supposed to be Scotland. It's really New Zealand. The British company shot the whole series there, in 6 months, and used the varied landscape for a whole bunch of other places around the globe. In the book Craggy-Tops is owned by an Aunt and Uncle, in the TV show Mrs Mannering and her two children Philip and Dinah live there, with an elderly Uncle. In the reality of the TV world the production company bought the bottom story of the house, moved it by truck to the location you see above, and built the second story and tower on site. I saw that in the 45 minute "making of" featurette that makes up the only extra on the DVD.
That's Philip Mannering on the left, next to him is his sister Dinah. The other two are Lucy-Ann and Jack Trent, cousins to the Mannering kids. The parrot is Jack's pal Kiki. He helps out in the adventures and he's a bit of a laugh at times. Philip and Dinah live with their widowed mother, Alison, in Craggy-Tops. Jack and Lucy-Ann are orphans who live with an neglectful uncle. In the first story they've come to Craggy-Tops on vacation.There's an island just off the shore that is home to some bad guys. The kids get involved with that and send the crooks to the jail. On their adventure they meet up with Bill Cunningham who turns out to be an agent for the government. He's been on the trail of the crooks for some time. There's a bit of danger but the crooks are often kind of bungling and cartoon like so there's usually not much to their death threats.
Over time Bill and Alison fall in love and they marry at the end of the 6th book. The family adopts Jack and Lucy-Ann. And Kiki. They have a couple more adventures before the books run out.
I liked the series and was glad to have picked up the DVDs. The kids are alright, most of them haven't acted before, but that doesn't seem to be a problem. All the locations are nice to look at and New Zealand does a great job filling in for all the other settings. The criminal activities are varied, counterfeiting, stealing treasure, selling a dangerous stolen bio-warfare liquid, a secret radioactive rod enrichment business and an anti-gravity machine. Much more SF than the original series of books, that's for sure. There's plenty of running about and oodles of critters. I've been happy with all the Blyton adaptations that I've seen so far. There are a couple more to get through. Sometime soon, maybe.
Hey there
Do you have any ideas where the exact filming locations were? I'd like to take a trip to NZ next year and really want to check out some of these great places!
Posted by: Alli W | August 23, 2020 at 05:47 PM
I didn't know but a quick trip to The Enid Blyton Society forum and here's a comment by Marc XX.
The Enid Blyton Adventure series by Cloud 9 was shot, produced and edited in Wellington New Zealand and all the child stars are Kiwis.
The island used in the pilot episode is in fact Kapiti Island about 45mins north of Wellington on the west coast.
It's our very own Kirrin Island now a sanctury for endangered birds and like the Famous Five the crossing to Kapiti can be quite treacherous sometimes!
Marc xx
Back to Garth: I don't know if that's accurate but it probably is, no one corrected him in the first three pages I read. There's more but I'm not going to spend anymore time on it. Google maps shows me Kapiti Island is only about 20 kilometers from Wellington.
Posted by: Garth | August 23, 2020 at 07:49 PM