All Creatures Great and Small: Season 3: new levels of grief and comfort and muted gaiety

A photo of Anna Madeley as Mrs Hall and Ella Bernstein as Eva Feldman, an evacuated Jewish child — done so as to evoke 1940s photos

“Snuggling down in the Yorkshire Dales to save a few cows turned out to be just what the doctor ordered last winter…” (Anibundel of the first season playing providentially almost just as the pandemic hit)

Dear friends and readers,

This is my third season watching this latest and 3rd iteration of James Herriot’s series of books, All Creatures Great and Small, and, as was to be expected, the matter has taken further turns away from the book. I find not totally to my surprise that I never posted on the first season, only its Christmas special albeit in the context of the series, the original movie and Herriot’s books. I also never posted on the second season as a whole, only giving it honorable mention as among a series of fine women’s films for 2022. This third season I’ve gotten to the point that I watch it as appointment TV, Sunday nights at 9 EST, and then re-watch it on the computer (WETA passport) so as to understand anything I misunderstood and savor it! Indeed, I keep up with Samuel West on twitter about the series, and was glad/relieved to be re-assured it will be back for a fourth season, one which incorporates the realities of World War Two as sifted through its comfort-show lens.

Opening paratexts — not as witty and varied as those of the Durrells but the same sort of entrance gate …

I feel I should say something in praise of it, yet am held back (as I was in previous years) by my sense of its shamelessly softened realities that intellectually I do not fall for, but emotionally cannot resist. The promotional photo put out by the series after the airing of the Christmas special embodies the formula: they offer suggestions of in-depth trauma controlled and distanced by the story and characters’ good natures so as to push the watcher into near tears as we actually watch everything turning out well after all. Anibundel calls it pastoral perfection. Sometimes they can overdo it and in the third season there was more evidence of this, as for example, when they were paradoxically insensitive as they tried to appeal to too many contradictory cultural impulses as in the use of a Jewish evacuated child also to stand in for a Christian child opening her magical presents on Christmas day surrounded by patiently pretending adults. Most of the time they have tact and quick pace enough not to insist on an over-motivated improbable anxiety by Nicholas Ralph as Herriot (still ostensibly the central hero) when confronted by a bullying authority figure; Callum Woodhouse as the boyish Tristan pulls this off much better since at the same time Woodhouse has a presence which remains wryly humorous.

An adequate detailed summary with useful links

Caring care

For me what stabilizes the mix are the many tales of suffering animals, some of whom die despite what is depicted realistically as veterinary care. I can believe in these skeins and cry over people upset because their pets (in effect) need rescue. I must not be the only watcher for whom Mrs Hall is turning out to be as central a character as Siegfried Farnon (seen more fully as a hurt sensitive man by Samuel West previously played somewhat similarly by Anthony Hopkins). They are our caring parent presences. The women remain in their traditional subordinate roles, supportive of their men, while strong in their own right; class status remains respected, ethnicity (British Indians are now added to the black farmers, assistants and one wife we’ve seen).

Siegfried and Mrs Hall dealing with a problem cooperatively

Her finest moment, Episode 4: the reunion with Frederick

I admit up-front last night’s ACGS was over-the-top in two ways and in the third parallel story overdid it (egged the compound so we would understand the theme), yet it touched me intensely, I was in a state of anxiety waiting with Mrs Hall, worried Edward would not come (and when Mrs H returns home and sits down with Siegfried the first question he asks is, “Did he come?”), then I did feel bad for her at his awkwardness, but glad he brought out his accusations. To tell the truth, I’m with him; at the last moment as they walk along towards the train she blurts out “I panicked” — that’s about it. When she discovered he was stealing, she became frightened she’d be blamed, and she needed a place to live, a job. She thinks she loves him above all, but unlike  a parallel Dickens’s text where we are to accept at surface value what Mrs Rouncewell (Bleak House, who also gave up a beloved son to fit into the hierarchical society) says (Mrs R does not say she loves George above everything), there is enough there to show us the son is partly correct in his assessment of Mrs H’s loyalties. She put him in jail. The second story of the weeping older man with his dog who is all the man has in the world did make me cry — alleviated by the comedy (if you can call it that, it was strained) of Siegfried “training” another boy. It was really too much to have Rachel’s younger sister (I think of her as Rachel not Helen) leave school so we could see Rachel show how loyal she is to the child herself — again undercut somewhat by an awareness this is not the best decision — or only if the girl genuinely wants to stay in this small world, which has been made idyllic and which Herriot has chosen when an adult and after a superior education.

His most moving, Episode Episode 3: the backstory killing of all the horses in WW1 still in Siegfried’s mind, told very well by Judith Cheney, a member of Trollope & his Contemporaries @ groups.io

“Siegfried in a flashback memory of the end of WW1, Siegfried was ordered to put down all of the war horses which would not be transported back to Britain. The white or dapple grey horse he killed was the horse in the scene, he & other soldiers found a horse which had been whinnying in pain wounded on the battlefield. They rescued & rehabilitated it. These horse killings had broken S.’s heart & deeply affected him for the rest of his life. (Remember the racehorse episode back a season or two?)

The superior officer who ordered Siegfried to kill all the horses may have been the man whose horse he was now again being told to put down on the Seabright estate – from the dialogue: Siegfried to this racehorse’s owner, ” Oh no you don’t, you’re going to stay & watch it this time.” Siegfried is able to save this horse however, by his gentleness & mounting him bareback, he is able to gallop him off over the hill & thus prove him rideable, with time & proper handling & kindness.”

A couple of recaps told me that this kind of episode where the accent is on sorrow and lost can be complained about — and also that there is more of this in this series than is explicitly appreciated. One trick is to keep the depths in the backstory: we never experience what happened to Mrs Hall and Frederick years ago, and our account of it remains incomplete.

I should say now (about the fakery) — I’ve probably said it before — Yorkshire is NOT eternally green, the skies do not ETERNALLY shine. Beige, brown, grey, yellow — yes some sunny days but certainly not in most of the winter. This is Wuthering Heights country. Rain, cold damp, raw — one of podcasts from WETA about the program has a British person who knows better but never a peep out of her. Wintertime days are very short. Very grey. But nevertheless I love their brightly colored animated paratexts, for Christmas covered with white snow. Flaws include that Woodhouse is getting too old to play the awkward semi-innocent (!) male; and Rachel Shenton as Helen is not given enough to do. The gaiety of the show is supplied by this innocent or overtly young non-predatory male. He is so easily controlled by his new love, the British Indian young woman, Florence Pandhi (Sophie Khan Levy)

The dog is hers

The film story does not yet go overtly into politics, but with World War Two coming up, they cannot slide over the threat of Nazism and fascism; instead they render these things hintingly and as beyond everyone’s conception. I doubt they will ever come near the true explanations of the evil’s facets (as Foyle’s War did and does almost every time): the existence of hopelessness and the need to escape into worlds of destruction would astonish these characters as crazed nightmares are precisely the sort of thing this series is an antidote for. The characters all stand firm in their belief the world is fundamentally a good place. Good medicine is what they mean to offer for those who can enter into the wholesome comfort of bargaining that works out well for almost all.

This is more sheer fun than the show and captures something archetypal about each of the characters:

Ellen

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The Christmas special: All Creatures Great and Small, 2021 (last year)

All Creatures Great and Small, Christmas episode, 2021 (closing scene … )

Friends and readers,

A long while ago, a new subgenre emerged — it may have occurred before TV, but certainly with TV: the Christmas special. At first the kind was a variety show, comedy and songs, with our weekly host/hostess, but didn’t take long for the filmed drama, serial style, to enter our lives directly into this holiday season everyone (seemingly) in the northern (and now even the southern — witness Australia) hemisphere seems determined to act out. In all the Christmas blogs I’ve done over the years, I have among the classic movies (1951 Scrooge, 1946 It’s a Wonderful Life), ghost, romance (Poldark), and popular Christmas movies, probably “done” a Christmas special. Indeed I remember writing about Downton Abbey in Scotland. There’s no use condescending, for some of these hours are brilliant and sustain us today still, for example, the early Sesame Street Christmas, the one where Mr Hooper and Bert and Ernie played out the O.Henry story, and Big Bird talked of Santa “stacked over Kennedy”.

Though James Herriot’s books have now provided at least one fine movie (1974, with Anthony Hopkins as Siegfried Farnon), and I’m told of eight entertaining years of British TV, beginning a few years after that (1978-90, with Robert Hardy as Farnon, and Christopher Timothy as Herriot, Peter Davison as Tristan), and last year was an unexpected hit (“Snuggling down in the Yorkshire Dales to save a few cows turned out to be just what the doctor ordered last winter.” , — I don’t know if anyone paid any special attention to Episode 7. I wasn’t inclined to until I started watching it. This evening I helped myself loosen the tightness I feel as I work at being cheerful under the prolonged strain of Covid — the isolater — by watching it twice!

Opening scene with James Herriot (Nicholas Ralph) opening gate in fence to move on through the beautiful countryside to a worn old house where an aging couple, white farmer with a black English wife, have called him because she is worried over a dog having trouble producing her puppies

Matching first scene with Mrs Hall (Anna Madeley, superb in the part), far more than housekeeper, to one side, and Siegfried Farnon (now Samuel West) to the other of a perfect tree: she is urging him not to open Tristan’s veterinarian test results, for looking won’t change them, and knowing (he’s failed once again) may spoil the days to come

By this time or as of this evening, I confess to having watched this new and third iteration of a first season (2021) through twice, its second season (2022) once (minus the Christmas episode which has not been played yet on British TV), a segment on YouTube of the 1974 movie once, and about 8 episodes of the first season of the 1975 version, once each. At first I was slightly hostile, instinctively alienated by the self-conscious pastoralism of the paratexts (please no meretricious Arcadias was my thought):

In the Christmas episode underneath the refrain associated with, framing the series, could be heard lightly Christmas bells …

Then the events occurring seemed dismayingly predictable.  But as I became involved with the animal care, and then the developing relationships and personalities, especially that of Mrs Hall, I was drawn in, and then amiably addicted. I remembered the paratexts from the 2016 Durrells and how I learned to love that series, and eventually bought the books by Gerry, a group biography, then a wonderful travel meditative book on Corfu, and before you know it, I was reading another of Lawrence Durrell’s travel books with different eyes, understanding where they came from far more. I am a fan of Keeley Hawes for life now.

As the first season went on, not only did it move beyond its kind conventions, the film-makers defied, went against the way the comic-emotional tropes are usually developed. This Christmas episode outdid itself. Most Christmas stories end with the characters getting some version of their heart’s desires, having clearly become life’s winners, not quite here. We learn eventually in fact Tristan (the puzzlingly marvelous Callum Woodhouse — also an unexpected mainstay of The Durrells) has not passed his exams, but when Siegfried opens the letter and reads pass/fail, he lies and then puts the letter in the fire. He will (at least for now) treat his younger brother insofar as he can as a certified veterinarian.  During this episode we watch Tristan learning on the job, not only to care for animals (a donkey requisitioned for the Christmas pageant) but the human being who is its caretaker and is in as much need of alert attention if any good is to be done for the donkey.

Tristan (dressed in the elf outfit to please his brother, Siefgfried) congratulating a small boy dressed as a wise man on telling that he fed the donkey mistletoe – now Tristan can try to figure out how to help the creature’s obvious pain

All episode long Mrs Hall is expecting, waiting, watching, eagerly anticipating the return of her son, Edward, to her (after a jail sentence in which her evidence helped convict him), only to about 3/4s through realize he is not coming. We see her hold up in church, the singing forcing her to control her crying (Siegfried holding her hand over the song book), and while appearing to accept, still in that last still not forgetting him. Because this is the way most Christmas stories end, like her I kept expecting him, but no miraculous forgiveness and reconciliation, only a growing awareness of the hardness of what his reality might now be.

The subtitle, Repeat the sounding joy, functions ironically

Most striking of all, after all Helen Alderson (Rachel Shenton) does not marry Hugh Hulton (Matthew Lewis). Several episodes seem to have brought them together, and now a main motive of this episode is her coming wedding, complete with bachelor’s party for him, the beautiful dress, the congratulations, the ceremony to be performed tomorrow as a key community event. But she cannot face it, and has apparently herself understood she loves Herriot; she urges Herriot to take her with him as he returns late in the evening to the the aging couple and their distressed female dog. The birth takes several hours, fog comes in, they cannot return until morning. We learn of how this couple came to marry, how they loved and have been true to their love against much prejudice and ostracizing.

A Black English woman was always an outsider says the wife, Hattie Edkins (Hetty Rudd)

First Helen and then James settle down to sleep on separate couches. With real difficulty he manages to start the car (it is very cold) and return her to her waiting dress, father. Then taking the kindly meant but conventional advice of Mrs Hall and Siegfried, James starts to drive away back to Glasgow (for Christmas with his parents), but at a symbolic crossroads, reverses and drives back. He discovers that Helen did not go through with the wedding, and now sits on a bench, alone, maybe waiting for him?

James sits next to her, and we watch them from the back, gradually talk, and hold hands, walking out of the church, the right couple at last

Hugh vanishes from the stage after his brief appearance at the party, on his way to a bachelor’s party — he has lost a lot of money as well as pride and his heart’s desire.

Of course it’s not all quiet trauma and doubt. The actresses are all very pretty, Helen especially in her melancholy and strong stasis

Helen brooding at a window (same posture seen in Anna Maddeley as Mrs Hall), standing in front of the car on the cold morning, enduring the coming wedding still

There are two other romances, which while moving at glacial paces, seem to be getting somewhere. Lovely ceremoniousness between Siegfried and an older woman friend of Mrs Hall, Dorothy (Maimie McCoy); like my present hero, Christopher Foyle (who knows not Michael Kitchen?), Siegfried says he is having difficulty forgetting his deceased wife. Tristan is perhaps more than flirting with Maggie (Mollie Winnard).

James and Helen with Connie (Charlie May-Clark) who has hopes of Herriot and finds everything so festive

Preparations for the coming feast — Siegfried overlooking what Mrs Hall has set out in the kitchen

Throughout the episode there is much happy activity, Christmas party, Christmas dancing, Siefried as Santa in green and white; the farmer’s market, Mrs Hall’s food, her shopping for Brussel sprouts. The dog does give birth finally and we watch the first puppy struggle for life and survive. Christmas carrolling in church (de rigueur in such films). Scenes of people eating together, drinking, just (as at the end) being together. All well-meaning. That does seem to be a universal tendency of these Christmas stories; when we meet a genuine evil man, like Mr Potter (Lionel Barrymore) in It’s a Wonderful Life, he is hated by all and thwarted, to the great satisfaction of all viewers, including this one.

If you are like me, home alone, you can vicariously join in to a Christmas that is believable. I do most days need some cheering up, so often so sad that right now my movie-watching includes this year’s All Creatures Great and Small, the set of DVDs sent me by my friend Rory. They still my heart with the strong projection of love, understanding, kindness between one another. I am especially fond of the direct emphasis on the animals the Vets and everyone else too are caring so tenderly for. That the first episode of the second season (about to start on US TV on PBS) opened with an temporarily ill but still adorable cat being taken care of by James was perhaps overdoing it …

Mrs Pumphrey (Diana Rigg) and Tricky-Woo — alas they are not in the Christmas episode

A few words about the differences between this 21st century version and the 20th: The 1978 serial is realer, its pastoral qualities quieter or not so determined, for money comes up right away, people have vexed and unforgiving temperaments.  The housekeeper is not so pretty or obliging and motherly (she keeps her distance, is a paid servant). There is far less depth of emotion. The literal events are much closer to the book.  This 21st century version has added characters (Helen’s sister for example, Herriot’s mother), usually a sign of strong change. I’m glad to see the overbearing dictatorial mother of the 21st century is not in the book. The women in the first series simply go to work, and are less self-conscious about it — dare I say the 20th century version is more quietly feminist? The 1978 series makes no strong effort to be pro-family the way this new series does — everyone does not become a honorary family member somewhere. Hugh’s role is smaller; he is simply preferred by Helen’s family for his higher rank and money. Much less is made of Mrs Pumphrey (Diana Rigg in the new iteration) and Tricky-Woo, the pampered pug. It seems in the 21st century the film-makers assume we long for imagined strong communities where people live up to some social obligations they usually don’t in real life. The 1978 is quicker in pace; I don’t feel it’s more comic though it’s trying to be. We might say the 2020/21 is a more romantic familial series (following in the steps of the 21st century The Durrells?)

Both series show the characters caring for the farm animals and pets, but as far as I watched of the 1978 version (I stayed only for a trial week) the cameras don’t come up as close to them, and I feel at more intensely caring approach is felt in the 2021 episodes. The wikipedia articles tells you that Nicholas Ralph had to do quite a bit of training to enact his role. Mrs Hall (Audrey) is centrally involved in all the veterinarian business too (all personal and professional issues). The impersonal minor presence on the typewriter, in the kitchen in the old 1978 series in this 2021 version holds up the light by which Herriot performs a dangerous operation on a cow.

I would say the 2021/2 version of All Creatures Great and Small is far more theatrical than any of the previous (including the original movie)

Gentle reader, you could do far worse than spend one of these holiday evenings watching the Christmas episode of the 2021 All Creatures Great and Small.

Ellen

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