A spiffing escapade full of Nazis, biscuits and lashings of ginger beer

SO that’s why Julian, Dick and Anne were free to romp around the countryside on their bikes throughout every school hol with their cousin George. Their parents are international spies.

Enid Blyton, who created The Famous Five (BBC1), doubtless never gave a second thought to her characters’ parents, any more than she worried what her own children were doing while she was busy writing.

But in their latest all-action incarnation, adapted by Nicholas Winding Refn, the children need some hint of a family life, beyond irascible Uncle Quentin and longsuffering Aunt Fanny (James Lance and Ann Akinjirin).

There’s also a subtle shift in the balance of power. Tomboy George (Diaana Babnicova) is the leader of the band, while older cousin Julian (Elliott Rose) has been relegated to goody-two- shoes and worry-guts.

Dick and Anne (Kit Rakusen and Flora Jacoby Richardson) are more sharply drawn than in the books — he’s a miniature boffin and full-time bookworm, she’s a bossyboots who can wheedle, blackmail or command adults to obey her bidding.

With Timmy the dog played by an adorable scruffy mutt called Kip, this is their second 90-minute adventure, set in the late 1930s with war looming. The costumes are impressively authentic, all Fair Isle tanktops and braces, but the language sometimes strays by decades. George, who is apt to say, ‘Whatever,’ when she’s sulky, is a particular offender.

The villains this time were Nazi officers, sailing into Loch Ness in a U-boat to steal a prototype computer or ‘algebra engine’ invented by Uncle Quentin. Lest anyone imagine it’s xenophobic to have foreigners as the Bad Guys, the script was at pains to point out that ‘nobody’s the villain of their own story’. Nazis are people too, you know.

The real Bad Guys are us Brits, of course, or at least our ancestors. Julian told a glamorous foreign agent, ‘You can’t just run around lying and stealing things that don’t belong to you.’ ‘Sweet boy,’ she admonished him, ‘you just described the British Empire.’ Her moral stance was undermined by the fact she was holding Timmy at gunpoint.

Much of the adventure took place on a train to Scotland — with sleeper carriages, which was convenient since an enemy agent disguised as a waiter drugged Quentin and Fanny into a stupor.

The waiter didn’t feature for long. He stumbled into a British intelligence man (Ed Speleers), who punched him on the jaw, hurled him through a window and quipped, ‘You can’t get the staff.’ Can somebody check whether a new James Bond has been signed up yet?

Despite these deviations, all the Famous Five essentials were in place — a secret passage, midnight vigils, tea, biscuits and, of course, lashings of ginger beer.

The children saved the day, not with violence but with ingenuity. The Nazis escaped with a typewriter instead of the algebra engine, and even Nessie put in an appearance. All in all, a spiffing escapade.