Son (and daughter) of the Famous Five

I've blogged before about the reimagining of Enid Blyton's Famous Five but I wasn't quite prepared for this, from The Times:

Blyton’s characters are being revived in a series of books, accompanied by an animated television series, screened on the Disney Channel. They still stop for lashings of ginger beer and are accompanied by their faithful dog, still called Timmy, but much has changed since the quintet first investigated Treasure Island in 1942.

Famous Five: On the Case introduces the children of Blyton’s original adventurers. Rumours that George nurtured sapphic tendencies proved wide of the mark. Her Anglo-Indian daughter Jo, short for Jyoti (Hindi for “light”), is the new team leader.

Wimpish Anne became a successful California art dealer and produced Allie, a shopping-obsessed Malibu girl who shares her mother’s disdain for dangerous antics. Dick’s son, Dylan, peruses the Japanese stock market for opportunities to make a quick yen.

The five — now with wireless laptop — are packed off to the Devon moors and are soon on the trail of smugglers. But they encounter a most sinister threat on their first adventure. A phoney environmentalist is running a DVD bootlegging operation from Shelter Island — just the kind of activity that is threatening Disney’s profits.

Our heroes discover that the DVDs are embedded with subliminal messages that brainwash children into craving Fudge Fries candy. The villain is brought to book.

Read the rest of the article and the (mostly up in arms) comments here.