The BBC’s big budget family thriller is back. It’s the summer of 1940, and the Second World War means that Julian, Dick and Anne find themselves on a station platform, evacuated from their home. They are to stay at The Prospect Hotel. Which is also where their cousin George (don’t call her Georgina) has been summoned, in a letter from Great Uncle Horace. Except, as the whole family knows, Uncle Horace is dead, squashed by an elephant in 1919. What can be going on?
Director Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive, Only God Forgives) has handed The Famous Five’s reins to Asim Abbasi, whose CV, like that of his predecessor, does not immediately suggest wholesome entertainment (see his self-written 2013 short film Whore). But in fact, it’s all incredibly charming, with just enough snap and sass to ensure that the show feels at once up to date and gorgeously retro.
The Prospect Hotel is, according to a fellow guest, a “ruddy unsuitable place to dump a pile of kids” but for us viewers, it’s simply marvellous, a gothic pile whose interiors are crammed with heavy drapes, exotic drinks and fascinatingly weird guests. There’s crabby old Miss Clutterbuck (Rita Tushingham) and her twitchy, put-upon daughter (Jemima Rooper, whom eagle-eyed older viewers will recognise as George from the 90s version of The Famous Five). Then there’s the prodigal son of the hotel’s proprietor, the famous jazz singer Cab Vee, real name Charlie Vincent (Amir Wilson of His Dark Materials).
While little Anne is busy discovering a spinning bookcase that leads to a secret passage, George (Diaana Babnicova) is having a tarot card reading from the mysterious guest on the fourth floor – a guest who turns out to be her old foe Wentworth, played, with flair, by Sex Education’s Jack Gleeson.
For Wentworth has had a vision: someone is planning to kill Charlie! Now The Famous Five are on the case, which is just as well, as Charlie’s cocktail turns out to have been spiked by sulphuric acid, and a fruit basket delivered to his room yields a large and poisonous spider. As in the previous episodes there are multiple suspects, and solving the mystery involves a lot of running about. It’s all fabulously atmospheric – a fair proportion of the show’s budget appears to have been spent on mist, which engulfs anyone who steps out the hotel’s front door.
Back inside, it’s all very rollicking. Anne (Flora Jacoby Richardson) may have had to endure whale fat sandwiches on the train and, under rationing, the hotel is out of butter, but there’s roast beef and cake for dinner, followed by a concert by the one and only Cab Vee. If Wilson never quite convinces as a jazz star – the subtly of his performance is lacking the charisma one would expect for a man who has, we are told, bewitched America; well, he’s certainly very dashing.
As for the Famous Five themselves, they are – incrementally – growing up; Julian (Elliott Rose) on the verge of manhood, has the hots for the maid Dilys (a wide-eyed Chloe Acland), while all four children are grappling with a world at war. It’s not much spoken of, but there is an affecting scene in which Anne is found crying, upset both at the danger faced by her parents back in London, and that they are going to miss her birthday.
As various suspects do all manner of suspicious things, the children spy on them through portraits with the eyes cut out, a champagne bucket is plonked over a rotter’s head, and there’s even some kissing (“Yuk!” says Anne). The cast are clearly having fun, most of all Gleeson as Wentworth, who gets all the best lines: “I’m distraught! Look at me being distraught!”
It’s clever, it’s cosy, and there’s just enough grit to stop things from becoming too cloying: “Mystery At The Prospect Hotel” is an episode the whole family really can enjoy.
‘The Famous Five’ is streaming on BBC iPlayer
