The Worst Witch returns to school with new BBC adaptation

Mildred Hubble and her fellow witches-in-training are making a TV comeback

The cast of The Worst Witch, which aired on CITV in the Nineties (Rex Features)

Halloween may have been and gone, but one hapless witch is heading back to TV screens.

The BBC is developing a new run of popular Nineties series The Worst Witch, which followed the misadventures of Mildred Hubble and her friends at Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches.

Jill Murphy, who wrote the original children’s books, is excited by the comeback plans.

"We're just in the process of working on it with the BBC," she told The Telegraph.

"They have much better special effects for the animals, so it should be wonderful. I'm really, really looking forward to it."

Georgina Sherrington, Sherlock's Una Stubbs and The Theory of Everything's Felicity Jones starred in the CITV series, which followed a "terribly disappointing" 1986 film adaptation.

"It was one of those things that start up a great hope and bits go wrong," Murphy said.

"It had an appalling script and they made various mess-ups, like with the costumes. When the girls saw the costumes, they practically cried because the hats looked ridiculous.

"Diana Rigg and Tim Curry did their absolute best with weak special effects, but they didn't have very good material."

Two further TV series, Weirdsister College and The New Worst Witch, failed to rival the first, but it remains to be seen how viewers will react to the BBC’s remake.