All Creatures Great And Small (Ch5)
An aerial shot of a vintage car making its way through the sunny Yorkshire Dales. Sheep being rounded up, and a bloke in a tweed jacket and flat cap shouting ‘Come by!’ at his dogs.
It can only be another series of All Creatures Great And Small.
The opening scenes featuring James and Helen’s children were a little syrupy. As he delivered a lamb, James spoke to his watching son like a nurse addressing a very elderly patient.
Yet it wasn’t long before normal service was resumed.
All Creatures is pitch perfect. The comedy doesn’t feel forced, and neither is the drama. You can imagine all these things happening in a small Yorkshire village.
In this case, the drama — or possibly the comedy — was that everybody was worrying about Siegfried. Housekeeper Mrs Hall has been staying with her family in Sunderland, and Siegfried has let himself go.
As James complains to Helen: ‘The practice is in a state. We’re short on stock, our profits are down.’
An aerial shot of a vintage car making its way through the sunny Yorkshire Dales. It can only be another series of All Creatures Great And Small
Nicholas Ralph pictured as James Herriot and Patrica Hodge as Mrs Pumphrey. All Creatures is pitch perfect. The comedy doesn’t feel forced, and neither is the drama
This is the usual message of modern television: men are rubbish, and without the supervision of women we are just one step from the workhouse.
In this case, though, television was probably right.
Without Mrs H, Skeldale House looked like a municipal tip. Rats were running about, and there was a Shetland pony in the house with his feet in the bathtub.
When James arrived for work, the horse’s lady owner had to be smuggled out of the house after waking up with Siegfried on the sofa. Who knew he had it in him?
To add to the chaos, Tristan returned from the war in Italy, looking very smart in his captain’s uniform. Siegfried has, of course, forgotten to collect him from the station.
There is only one thing to do. Mrs Hall must be lured back from Sunderland.
A first encounter does not go entirely well. Siegfried doesn’t know about her return, and meets her emerging from the kitchen. ‘I were in the pantry,’ says Mrs H.
‘All this time?’ says Siegfried, delightfully vague. If she had really spent months locked in the pantry, he probably wouldn’t have noticed.
The opening scenes featuring James and Helen’s children were a little syrupy. As he delivered a lamb, James spoke to his watching son like a nurse addressing a very elderly patient
From then on, it was only a matter of time. What some of us have been waiting for most in Channel 5’s revival of All Creatures is for Mrs H to be clasped to his tweedy bosom.
It happened at last on the station platform in a wonderful Brief Encounter moment. A disgruntled Mrs H was heading back to Sunderland, but Siegfried dashed off to the station in a desperate attempt to stop her.
On the platform, everybody was embracing because the war had ended. So it was only polite for them to join in.
At long last.
‘It’s good to have you back,’ he said. ‘Just wait to see how far behind we are with the laundry.’
Oh, the old romantic.
