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Enid Blyton: ZDF has a new edition of “Five Friends”.

ZDF and Yoshitaka Kono / [M] Service plan.

The new edition of the Enid Blyton classic was created as an international co-production in collaboration with the BBC and BBC Studios.

In 1978 and 1979 there was a television series about the “Five Friends”, based on the stories by Enid Blyton. This series was originally called “The Famous Five” and was commissioned by ITV. The ZDF premiered in Germany. The new edition of “The Famous Five” is once again a German-British collaboration. This time between the BBC and ZDF. It has been known for many months that this will exist. What's new: the start date of the three films, which are around 90 minutes long.

ZDF will make the new series available in the media library on December 5th and broadcast it linearly around Christmas. Two episodes will run linearly on December 25th from 3 p.m. ZDF obviously noticed what an enormous success the “New Stories from Pumuckl” had in its Christmas broadcast on RTL last year – and the episodes are said to have worked very well on RTL+ during Advent. This year, families can also watch “Five Friends.”

ZDF sees a need for gripping adventure stories

“A legendary treasure that has been lost for centuries, an invention that could change the course of the world, and many unsolved mysteries – the 'Five Friends' conjure up a highlight in ZDF's Christmas program.” (…) At a time when the need for… “Gorgeous adventure stories grow, George, Julien, Dick, Anne and dog Timmy offer the best entertainment for the whole family,” says Jasmin Maeda, main editorial director for international fiction at ZDF.

Author Matthew Read said: “It was clear to us from the start that we didn’t just want to retell the novels on film.” We wanted to use the entire book series as a starting point. “On this basis, we developed our own stories, inspired by the entire canon of Five Friends books.”

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