Throw any sharp object you can grab straight in my general direction if my opinion displeases you, I still absolutely adored Channel 5's new adaptation of the James Herriot stories All Creatures Great & Small. So sue me I was 4 years old when the old BBC series hit the airwaves and 15 when it was... put down. But I did read the first 2 novels in College, and I say with no hesitation that it is a love letter to those books. I am not disparaging the 80s show you watched every Sunday afternoon, I never even "bloody" watched it.
The 6-part series star newcomer Nicholas Ralph (literally, his very first acting credit) as young Glasgow veterinarian James Herriot, who faces a life working in the docks during Great Depression 1 (just being proactive, because you know the 2020s will go down as Great Depression 2) when he receives an invitation to join a vet practice as an assistant in the English countryside of the Yorkshire Dales. His new employer is at first ignorant of said invitation (his housemaid did the deed, you see) but the grumpy doc soon enough grows fond of having a pupil to taunt, while young James needs to acclimate to a town quite alien to him.
If you spent your global quarantine, like so many, bingeing on Netflix true-crime shows like Tiger King, than this show is for you. Because it could not be more different (honestly I haven't watched Tiger King, but even isolated I couldn't stop hearing about it from everyone). In a year that just keeps out-darking itself, the fictional town of Darrowby and its denizens are a breath of fresh air. The 1930s rural England recreation is a wonder to gaze at, almost as much as the characters are warm and witty to a fault. This isn't the melodrama of Downtown Abbey (even though both shows share a producer), this is the simple charm of life, in all its soothing appeal.
Surrounding the hero to help him insert his entire arm in horse behinds are a refreshing array or British talent. No offence to the Daniel Mays, Philip Glenisters and Keeley Hawes of it all, but sometimes you wanna watch a friendly yet not SO familiar face that you don't see each week on any British channel. Samuel West of Mr Selfridge (and the 1995 adaptation of Austen's Persuasion, which I enjoy much more than I care to say) takes over as the good doctor and mentor who is as endearing as infuriating, while his housemaid and closest friend, Mrs Hall, gains surprising depth as played by the amazing Anna Madeley.
Joining them are Neville Longb... I mean Mathew Lewis as the resident rich a-hole, Switched at Birth's Rachel Shenton as the unavailable love interest, and upcomer Callum Woodhouse as the irresponsible, free-loading brother Tristan. Oh, and the town's overly eccentric pooch owner Mrs Pumphrey brings equal parts smiles and tears, as played by the recently-deceased Dame Diana Rigg. Seeing the spark still light up her eyes in her final role at 82 is a thing of beauty, a necessary heartbreak.
Unless you enjoy sociopathic tendencies that make recent times joyful ones for you, All Creatures Great & Small is a timely offering that we all deserve to dwell into. Ed Power of iNews put it best by saying: Who needs superheroes when you can watch a vet coax a cow to its feet?
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