It’s lovely to see this back for a fourth series. It’s obviously proven to be a hit – so take that, all ye Blyton naysayers, especially the primary school teachers who used to moan about how much time I spent reading her books!
In the book, new girls Clarissa, Connie and Ruth are in the same form as Darrell & co, but the BBC have put them in the First Form with Felicity, June and Susan. It’ll upset purists, but I can see why they’ve done it. I can’t think of any mention of any other girls in that form, other than Jo who doesn’t appear until a later book, and it’d look a bit daft to have a form with only three girls in it!
Also, Darrell’s been made head of the entire Lower School, not just her own form, which gives her authority over Felicity and should make for some interesting sibling interaction. But I assume that we’re still going to get the “canon” storylines of Connie’s behaviour towards Ruth, Gwen’s wish to be friends with Clarissa. and Darrell losing her temper.
Incidentally, Enid Blyton really muddled her form systems in the fourth book of the series! We’d had the First Form, the Second Form and the Third Form, but then suddenly we had the Upper Fourth, with Ruth talking about moving up into the Lower Fifth. Er, no. If you’re using the Upper IV, Lower V system, Upper IV is the third year and Lower V is the fourth year, and the first and second years are Upper III and Lower IV respectively! In this adaptation, they were just referred to as “the Fourth Form”!
Anyway, as I said, it’s great to have this back, and I look forward to watching it all!
setinthepast 