A
long-running series of comic/adventure stories by Richmal Crompton about an 11-year-old English boy named William Brown.
William is a mischevious and adventurous, if mostly well-intentioned, boy,
cheerfully indifferent to school and the baffling (to him) rules of adult life.
The series is a strong user of
Comic Book Time; each book is set in the era in which it was written and yet William is 11 throughout. The first compilation of short stories was published in 1921 and the 39th in 1970.
The stories have been adapted numerous times for various media. Three movies (
Just William, Just William's Luck and
William at the Circus) were produced in
The Forties, as was a radio series. Later on, in
The Nineties, BBC released several
Audiobook adaptations of the stores read by Martin Jarvis, which are probably the most well-known adaptations to date.
No less than four TV series have been made based on the characters and stories. The first one, produced for BBC in 1962-63, was simply called
William whereas the three following series (in 1976, 1994 and 2010) all kept the
Just William title.
This series provides examples of:
- Adults Are Useless - William certainly thinks so, and he's even right about a vast number of them.
- Aloof Big Brother - William's "grown-up brother" Robert.
- Annoying Younger Sibling - He's the protagonist.
- Book Dumb
- Catchphrase - "Crumbs".
- Deadpan Snarker - William tries to be this, but a lot of his sarcasms fail quite badly. His father is notably better at it.
- Forgotten Trope - Several, given the periods the stories were written in. Good examples include an early 1920's version of the Red Scare and various World War II related tropes.
- Five-Man Band
- Generation Xerox- One story focuses on the Outlaw's various schemes to get some fireworks for bonfires night, at the end of their story, their fathers, walking home from work, hijack the fireorks and begin reminiscing about their childhood exploits as a gang together
- Gender Blender Name - An author with the first name of Richmal writing about a boy's adventures is a man, right? Wrong.
- I Am Not Shazam - Just William is merely the title of the first book: each book title uses the form "__ William", "William the __" or "William and __". The term is frequently used casually to refer to the series as a whole, though – and, in a rather odder tendency, to the main character (e.g. "...a classic child hero in the mould of Harry Potter, Charlie Bucket or Just William") as if it were his name... when it is in fact the perfectly serviceable William Brown.
- Kid Anova - Despite claiming to not like girls, William does have a tendency to fall for the pretty ones — or at least the ones who aren't too silly in his opinion. Quite a number of them turn out to like him, too.
- Laser-Guided Karma/Karma Houdini - Both used frequently.
- Long-Running Book Series
- Love Makes You Dumb - Happens to several characters, including William on occasion, but Robert is the most prominent and most constant example.
- Naughty Is Good - Of course.
- Noble Demon - William and his friends regularly picture themselves as robbers, pirates, kidnappers and so on and even name themselves 'The Outlaws' but they are almost never actively malicious (at least against the undeserving.)
- Spoiled Brat - Violet Elizabeth Bott, though with some traces of Spoiled Sweet, depending on the story.
- The Roaring Twenties - The original series setting.
- World War II - The stories written during the war (all focus was on the Home Front).
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