The news was broken in June 2023 that a reimagined adaptation of the classic Enid Blyton children’s book series The Famous Five for the BBC and ZDF was taking place by Nicolas Winding Refn as creator and executive producer. Episode one was announced to be written by Matthew Read, with Episode 2 written by Priya K. Dosanjh and Episode 3 written by Matthew Bouch and Read. Other executive producers include Read and Bouch, Will Gould, Frith Tiplady, Christina Bostofte Erritzøe, and Kimberly Willming. The series Producer is Sophie MacClancy.[1][2][3]
The series is set to be three 90-minute episodes. Tim Kirkby is a director of one of the episodes and executive producer on the project.[4] Other directors to helm an episode are Asim Abbasi and Bill Eagles. The project is executive produced by Refn for byNWR and Matthew Read for Moonage Pictures, in co-production with ZDF.[5]
Casting
The main cast were revealed in July 2023. The Five would be played by Diaana Babnicova, Elliott Rose, Kit Rakusen and Flora Jacoby Richardson, completed by a Bearded Collie cross named Kip. Jack Gleeson was cast as Thomas Wentworth, Ann Akinjirin and James Lance were cast as parents of George, and Diana Quick was cast as Mrs. Wentworth.[6]
In February 2024, it was announced that Ed Speleers and Nora Arnezeder were cast as Mr. Roland and Sabrina Grover for Episode 2 and Jason Flemyng and Art Malik were cast as circus magician the Great Supremo and Sir Lincoln Aubrey for Episode 3.[7]
The first episode was shown in the UK on CBBC and BBC iPlayer from 9 December 2023 with the second episode debuting on 29 March 2024.[11][12][13][14][7][15] The third episode was made available on 25 May 2024.[16]
In the US, the episodes will be available on Hulu from 31 May 2024.[17]
