The film is a parody of Enid Blyton's Famous Five books, in which the Five – children Julian, Dick, George, Anne, and their dog Timmy – arrive on holiday at their uncle Quentin and aunt Fanny's home. With their uncle missing, the Five decide to spend several days on a cycling holiday in Dorset. After picnicking and reporting some criminals to the local police they visit the local village to buy cakes to celebrate at shopkeeper’s shop. There they also encounter a horrible but rich boy, Toby, whom the Five at first refuse to accept into their group due to his ugly behaviour and also their cliquish nature. Later, while camping, Toby becomes kidnapped by the same criminals as before. Coltrane later also appears again, this time as a lecherous gypsy. The film ends when the Five sneak into an abandoned castle and uncover what has really been going on all this time. The special mocks and satirises aspects of Blyton's books, most notably the dated sexism, racism and class snobbery of the books and the formula of the young adventurer genre, as well as the running gag relating to the books' constant mention of the various feasts the Five indulge in while on picnics. The film's phrase "lashings of ginger beer" became so well known that it is now often mistakenly attributed to Blyton herself, although it never appears in any of the Famous Five books. The film also makes overt references to bestiality in George and overt references to the criminalisation of homosexuality in pre-1968 Britain: the film's climax reveals that the group's uncle Quentin is a "screaming homosexual" who faked his own kidnapping in order to abandon his "nymphomaniac" wife, Aunt Fanny.
Critical reception
Reviewing Channel 4's launch night for the Financial Times, Chris Dunkley wrote that it was a "deliciously accurate parody of Enid Blyton's mind-numbingly repetitive adventure stories", but compared it unfavourably to Ripping Yarns.
A sequel, Five Go Mad on Mescalin, was produced for the second Comic Strip Presents... series in 1983, but was seen as an unworthy successor to the first, despite being created by the same writer/director team. The plot, involving a pushy rich American with a spoiled son, is loosely based on Enid Blyton's Five on Finniston Farm. Notably, it implies that the Five might have sympathised with Nazi Germany because the Nazis were not as "vulgar" as Americans.
The third in the series, Five Go to Rehab, was produced in 2012, and shown on Gold on 7 November. It received poor reviews. The original cast reprised their roles, now well into middle-age. Reuniting for Dick's birthday after decades apart, the four and Toby lament how their lives took unexpected paths while Dick drags them on another bicycle adventure, which he had meticulously planned for fourteen years. In a reversal, George had married a series of wealthy men whom she cuckolded, with, among others, one of her stepsons ; whereas Anne has become a strongly opinionated vegan spinster and is suspected by Dick of being a "dyke" – an accusation made against George by Toby in the original Five Go Mad in Dorset. George and Julian have been committed to an alcoholics' sanatorium, the latter owes a large debt to African gangsters, and Anne recently served a prison sentence for setting her nanny aflame. The group eventually discover their car sabotaged and track the culprit to the sanatorium where George and Julian are staying. There they are kidnapped by Toby, who reveals his plan to imprison his childhood tormentors in a museum display prison. He also reveals that he has been grooming his own children to serve as replacement version of the Famous Five, under the guise that the world has forgotten the original group. However, Toby's children immediately recognise the Five and turn on their father, who is taken to jail. Five Go to Rehab utilised a form of a floating timeline; although the original film's events are said to have taken place thirty years in the past and "five years after the war", the reunion film appears to be set approximately contemporaneous to its filming. This marked the last time Edmondson worked with his comedy partner Rik Mayall, before Mayall's death in June 2014.
Music
Music in both programmes had been used by the BBC as themes for radio programmes. Titles include: "In Party Mood" by Jack Strachey, "Puffin' Billy" by Edward White, and "Calling All Workers" by Eric Coates.
