The Famous Five return to CBBC this Christmas … so does that mean lashings of ginger beer and endless twee adventure? Not in this adaptation, which takes Enid Blyton’s much-loved books and gives them a modern edge while retaining their original 1940s setting.

At face value, it is an unlikely collaboration between Moonage Pictures co-founder Matthew Read and Danish film director Nicolas Winding Refn, best known for the ultraviolent Pusher trilogy and Drive with Ryan Gosling, which won Refn a Cannes Festival Best Director Award. Read and Refn are long-term collaborators and friends, having worked together on Pusher, the equally brutal Valhalla Rising and – another surprise, perhaps – ITV’s Agatha Christie adaptation, Marple.

A shared love of Blyton’s books and British films of the 1940s, particularly those of Powell and Pressburger and Hitchcock, led them to buy the rights to The Famous Five. “A lot of the values in the books about adventure and friendship are completely timeless – kids are looking for exactly the same things now,” says Read.

Two 90-minute films were shot back-to-back in September and October at Bristol’s Bottle Yard Studios and in surrounding locations. These follow a successful first series that concluded earlier this year. They are set during the Second World War when Blyton began writing her 21 Famous Five books. Their atmosphere, explains Read, is one of absent grown-ups and children roaming the countryside – but with war casting a shadow over the country.

“Telling a story in which the kids can’t use their phones to ring for help makes the adventures more exciting,” he says. “Life can be great, exciting and rich, but there are also scary things going on, which is something that kids and adults can connect to now. We were never just interested in doing a period adaptation of the Famous Five.”

The Christmas episode, 'Mystery at the Prospect Hotel', reunites the young cast from series one (see overleaf), with James Lance and Ann Akinjirin also returning as Uncle Quentin and Aunt Fanny. The second episode, 'Big Trouble on Billycock Hill', will follow in 2025.

The established cast are joined by Spanish actor María Pedraza (Money Heist), Amir Wilson (His Dark Materials), James Wilby (Poldark), Rita Tushingham (A Taste of Honey) and Jemima Rooper (Geek Girl), who played George in ITV’s mid-1990s The Famous Five.

Production designer James North – fresh from shooting Smilla’s Sense of Snow, a TV adaptation of Peter Høeg’s novel, in temperatures of -30°C on Finland’s frozen seas – was charged with recreating the Famous Five’s warm, nostalgic 1940s Britain. The art department immersed themselves in wartime films and photos to help them “visualise and realise what’s on the page”, says North.

“We want to know what is historically correct, but the art [of design] is that we take that information and choose what we wish to take heed of and what we’d rather ignore – sometimes what’s historically correct doesn’t look cool.” The world of the Famous Five “has to have a slightly magical and heightened realism, and it should feel an exciting world to be in. You wish your childhood was like that: endless summer days by the coast, living in a homely cottage full of quirks and mementos. It’s a colourful family adventure. It needs to feel nostalgic, but most importantly it needs to be fun.”

North adds: “I’ve got three children of my own and it’s lovely making a show where everyone can get something out of it.”

The stars of the show – numbers one to five on the call list – are the four children and their dog, Timmy. Film lore says “never work with animals or children”, but producer Sophie MacClancy is having none of it. “It’s always great fun to work with kids and animals. You don’t always know what they’re going to be doing but that just makes it more exciting,” she says. “Our young cast are fantastic and absolutely professional. They know their lines and where to stand. They’re always incredibly well prepared.

“They bring lightness and friendliness to the set. It’s also beneficial because we don’t shoot late, so everyone who works on the job has a chance to have a bit of work-life balance. People can go home and see their families.

“They’re also working on something they can watch with their families, which is lovely.”

MacClancy was an avid Blyton reader as a child, hoovering up The Famous Five, as well as the Malory Towers, Secret Seven and St Clare’s series. “I was a huge fan. Blyton really captured what it was like to be a child with a sense of freedom.”

She says that it’s “a thrill” to be “taking something that so epitomises old-school Britain and making it accessible for a modern audience.

“This is a children’s show but it’s something the whole family can watch together. The films are darker than the original books – there’s jeopardy, there’s proper peril.”

Meet Timmy, the ‘best dog in the world’

Kip turned three in October and was treated to a birthday cake of chopped-up chicken on set. The bouncy bearded collie, who made his TV debut last year as George’s dog, Timmy, was cast before any human actors. He greets me enthusiastically in the company of his owner and trainer, Rosie Ison. ‘I’m lucky to have such a great dog. Everyone adores Kip,’ she says.

Ison is an experienced handler, and five of her dogs have appeared in shows, including Rowan Atkinson’s Netflix comedy Man vs. Bee and the 2020 film adaptation of The Secret Garden.

How does she train a dog to act? ‘I got [Kip] at nine months, and you start with the basic things that you need to go on set – sits, stays and going to a mark. I don’t do an awful lot of specific training until they’re needed to do something on set, and then I’ll put a lot of work into it. You don’t want to overwhelm a dog with lots of things at once because they forget. The last thing I taught him was to cover his eyes.’

It’s not just about teaching tricks; as with the child actors’ chaperones, Ison has a caring role: ‘You have to be mindful of dogs in this environment. Kip doesn’t worry about bright lights but someone shouting can be a problem. He doesn’t understand that it’s acting. When those scenes are playing out, I have to remove him from the set.’

Producer Sophie MacClancy says that Kip has grown as an ‘actor’ since series one. ‘He’s more attuned to what we’re after. He knows that when we say “action” he is performing, or at least it seems like he does. Rosie has done a wonderful job reading through the scripts and figuring out what Kip can already do and what she might need to train him to do. If there are things she doesn’t think are going to work, we amend the script.’

So, is there anything that Kip can’t do? Ison replies: ‘He doesn’t like water. He’ll run through it and play in the sea, but he’s not keen on swimming.’

Television met four of the Five – including Kip who plays Timmy, though sadly not Elliott Rose (Julian) who was busy filming – on the final day of the shoot in Bristol. After eight weeks on set, the young cast were looking forward to a Halloween wrap party.

They are charming and natural, with none of the precociousness you fear in child actors. ‘I could do this for ever – it’s so much fun,’ says 13-year-old Flora Jacoby Richardson (Anne), who made her professional stage debut alongside Keeley Hawes in The Human Body at the Donmar Warehouse in February.

At 15, Diaana Babnicova (George), is a relative veteran, having acted since she was eight. She loves the ‘vibe on set; everyone’s joking and happy’.

‘Everybody’s always so nice and chatty,’ adds 14-year-old Kit Rakusen (Dick), who appeared in Kenneth Branagh’s coming-of-age film Belfast.

The negatives are negligible: waking up early and wearing heavy 1940s wool clothing is all they can come up with.

How different are their teenage lives to those of Blyton’s children? Jacoby Richardson says of her character: ‘Anne plays with dolls; now we’ve got electronics, TV and phones. Kids then were more creative – they’d go off to the woods and come up with games. They got up to mischief. It would be fun, but obviously not [living through] the war.’

Babnicova says: ‘My life is completely different to George’s – it’s city-based. If I could live George’s life, it would be so great, because she has so much fun in the outdoors. She has a sick life.’

Rakusen, though, finds similarities: ‘I love playing with my friends in the woods, climbing trees. I did the Duke of Edinburgh scheme at school and loved finding my way with a map and without electronics.’

The young actors have had a good week; half-term means no sessions with tutors. Is it hard combining school work and acting? ‘It’s not easy because your brain has to be in so many places,’ says Babnicova. ‘But because our days are so busy, the adrenaline gets you through. It’s easier because there are four of us – we bounce off each other’s energy.’

Rakusen adds: ‘It can be tiring. In the morning, you might do two hours of tuition, and going on set afterwards can be difficult for the first 10 minutes. But with all the lights and the energy, you get untired quickly.’

Is it tough to return to normal life? ‘It’s not easy,’ admits Babnicova. ‘I go to a theatre school, so everyone’s striving to reach the same goal. It goes one of two ways – they are very supportive because they know how it is, or they get jealous and don’t talk to me.’

Jacoby Richardson says: ‘I go to a normal school and people don’t really care.” Apart from getting ‘to hang out with her friends’, she is not looking forward to normal life. ‘I’d rather do this for the whole year than be at school.’

Is acting a job for life? ‘One hundred per cent,’ they chorus. Babnicova says: ‘I want to do this for the rest of my life. This is the only job I can think of that makes me want to jump out of bed in the morning.’

The Famous Five: Mystery at the Prospect Hotel airs on CBBC and BBC iPlayer on 23 December.