Famous Five return for TV series

The series follows the original characters' children

Enid Blyton's Famous Five are returning to TV screens in a new animated series - with an updated 21st Century look.

Famous Five: On the Case features the children of the original ginger beer-loving adventurers - and their dog, Timmy.

But the Famous Five's offspring are now multicultural; their enemies include a DVD bootlegger and they sport modern gadgets like iPods and mobile phones.

The new series launches on 5 May on the Disney Channel.

The first Famous Five book, Five on a Treasure Island, was published in 1942 and the series is considered a children's classic.

Contemporary twist

Producers say the animated tales remain faithful to the themes of storytelling, mystery and adventure central to the original books but add a contemporary twist.

They feature 12-year-old Anglo-Indian Jo, short for Jyoti - a Hindi word meaning light - who, like her mother George, is a tomboy and the group's team leader.

Other characters include Allie, a 12-year-old Californian "shopaholic" who enjoys going out and getting "glammed up" but is packed off to the British countryside to live with her cousins.

The children come together at their aunt's house on the English coast.

Her mother was Anne in the Famous Five, a reluctant adventurer who has now become a successful art dealer.

The team is completed by adventure junkie Max, who is 13-year-old Julian's son; Dylan, the 11-year-old son of Dick, and dog Timmy.

The animated series was given the seal of approval by Blyton's eldest daughter, Gillian Baverstock, before she died at the age of 76 last year.

"We tried to imagine where the original Famous Five would go in their lives," Jeff Norton from Chorion, which owns the rights to Blyton's books, told the Press Association.

"Because George was such an intrepid explorer in the original novels we thought it would be only natural that she travelled to India, to the Himalayas, where she fell in love with Ravvi. That's the back story (to Jo).

"We spoke to Enid Blyton's daughter and she thought her mother would love what we have done," he added.