“Really, guys, you are most difficult to cope with!” said Aunt George to the four children sat eating breakfast and poring over the laptop on the kitchen table.

“How on earth are you expected to have real adventures with your eyes glued to a screen all the time?”

So, 66 years after Enid Blyton created the Famous Five, it turns out that George liked boys after all. In the latest version of the childrens’ favourite she now has a Hindu daughter as the offspring of the amateur sleuths are reinvented by Disney as digital detectives.

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.

The new five are “sassier” than their upper middle-class parents. Describing a monster, the laptop-wielding Dylan exclaims: “It’s been around for centuries — longer than Prince Philip.” When Allie uses the light from her mobile phone to plot their escape from a dark tunnel, she reminds viewers: “Cell phones are the greatest — you can order pizza with them.”

Storylines echo Blyton’s tales, with the thieving Edgar Stick, a former nemesis of George, hatching a new plan to steal a map of Kirrin Island. George, now an auntie, makes a guest appearance when the Bambazu, a rare plant of her own creation, is stolen.

Like The Dangerous Book for Boys, the new Famous Five is intended as a riposte to a society where children are told it is too dangerous to play outdoors. Although the children are notionally under the sway of Aunt George, they are encouraged to sleep rough on the moors, go kayaking and explore deserted mines and offshore islands. Jeff Norton, director of Brand Development of Chorion, which owns the rights to all the Blyton books, said: “The new Five is a fresh, modern concept which relates to audiences in a multimedia age. They are smart, cool and hip kids but like their parents they use their resourcefulness and survival skills to bring down the bad guys.”

The original Five were mocked in a Channel 4 Comic Strip spoof for their reactionary attitudes. But the new series pokes fun at the “posh” Dunstons, the wealthiest family in Devon and their “bratty” children.

Hodder is encouraging children to read the original stories and write their own Famous Five story. The best entry will be turned into a podcast.

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