The Famous Five BBC One: New series to bring Enid Blyton’s books to life starring Game of Thrones star Jack Gleeson

Nicolas Winding Refn (byNWR) and Matthew Read (Moonage Pictures) bring Enid Blyton’s classics to life with an ambitious reimagining of the famous stories.

The Famous Five follows five daring young explorers as they encounter treacherous, action-packed adventures, mysteries, danger and astounding secrets.

The series showcases four rising star actors who will lead as the young protagonists at the helm of the series: siblings Julian (Elliott Rose - The Northman), Dick (Kit Rakusen - Foundation) and Anne (Flora Jacoby Richardson) and their cousin George (Diaana Babnicova - Don’t Breathe 2), as well as Timmy the Dog.

Joining the five are Jack Gleeson (Game of Thrones) as Wentworth, Ann Akinjirin (Moon Knight) as Fanny, James Lance (Ted Lasso) as Quentin, Diana Quick (Father Brown) as Mrs Wentworth, and William Abadie (Emily in Paris) as Boswell.

The Famous Five is a three-part series that will be aired on CBBC and BBC iPlayer in co-production with German ZDF.

The first episode was directed by Tim Kirkby (Fleabag, The Pentaverate) and produced by Moonage Pictures and byNWR Originals. Asim Abbasi (Churails, Cake, Count Abdulla) and Bill Eagles (Beautiful Creatures, Gotham, Pennyworth) will direct the following episodes. The first episode aired on Saturday, December 9, 2023 at 5.25pm.

It will also air on BBC One between Christmas and New Year and two more episodes of The Famous Five will follow in 2024.

Matthew Read said: “When we first formed Moonage Pictures we sat down and decided that we really wanted to make TV that was both inspirational and that we could watch with our children.

“I brought Nicolas Winding Refn on board because, having worked with him before, I knew he always wanted to be the sixth member of The Famous Five.

“Our approach to The Famous Five books was not to simply adapt the novels but to look at the entire series of the books and take inspiration from the source material. Rather than taking the individual stories and making straight adaptations of the books, we looked at the books as a jumping off point. We wanted to weave our own stories which were inspired by the whole cannon of The Famous Five books.

“Whilst the series is set in the late 1930s, we wanted to create a drama series that is set in the timeless space of childhood. We wanted to draw on viewers’ memories of the long summers in their childhood rather than trying to specifically tie it down to one moment in time.”