Now Uncle Hodgkin will throw our rings, and we'll all have a lovely game

[evelyn_b]

I mentioned earlier that I've been watching a lot of All Creatures Great and Small, the profoundly cozy TV series about country vets who drink too much and do their best. The premise is very simple: James is an Affable Everyman Vet who takes a job in the tiny rural community of Darrowby (Home of the Road Sheep) with Eccentric Genius Vet Siegfried Farnon and his brother Tristan, a Feckless Young Vet. Then it's down to work and a long string of episodes: some funny, some sad, some a little of both. James maintains an almost indestructible good cheer as he struggles with his nemeses, Real Yorkshire Bacon* and his own inability to say no. Siegfried's nemesis is people expecting him not to contradict himself every twenty minutes. Tristan's nemesis is Siegfried. They are a good crew, even if they never bother to learn to cook for themselves, leaving them helpless whenever the housekeeper goes on vacation. The vets are followed everywhere by a chorus of energetic background dogs. Sometimes the camera will be placed so that the dogs are out of sight, but you can still see their tails waving around at the bottom of the screen.

It stays good all the way through, though the later series introduces a deeply annoying romance plot in a failed attempt to recapture the magic of Season One's adorable romance plot.

We've been looking for a good replacement, but I'm not optimistic about finding another show that combines the maximum sustainable level of coziness with the most dogs in such a satisfying way. What I really want is "Low-key Country Vets II: The Next Generation" but that doesn't seem to exist. There is a short-lived prequel called Young James Herriot, starring Fitz from Agents of SHIELD as a very small and hapless James at veterinary school in Glasgow. It takes place in a city instead of the countryside, which might explain why it's so dark (seriously, can't you turn some lights on?) and there are puppies but also some very ham-handed dialogue and several straw men, if the trailer is any indication.

There is also a movie that predates the series by two or three years, with a baby-faced James and Anthony Hopkins as Siegfried. It's not the worst movie ever made, but it's very obvious that TV is the best home for this material.

Also watching: Jeeves and Wooster, which ought to be a treasure trove of my favorite UK export, bad American accents. In practice, some of the "American" performances are painfully rather than entertainingly bad. Or maybe it's more accurate to say that all of the performances are very broad, and for whatever reason I find their kind of broadness funnier and less jarring in a plummy Bertie Wooster accent than in an American one. Stephen Fry has a good sense of comic timing, but an imperfect sense of the essence of Jeeves, which I've always understood to include not rolling one's eyes every five minutes like a thirteen-year-old at Disneyland. He (or maybe the director) seems to think we won't get it if he doesn't pile on the ham. The best parts of Jeeves and Wooster are the opening credits, which are delightful and very Wodehouseian, every time Hugh Laurie gets to play the piano, and every time there's an interior shot of the Drones Club with the chaps doing something clumsy and nonsensical in the background.

For animals on TV, The Durrells has been pretty good. At least, the island is beautiful, little Gerry and his sullen siblings are cute, and Roger the dog is impressively scruffy. I'd be happy with more hedgehogs and more of Gerry's adventures in general, but there's time yet.


*As depicted on the show, Real Yorkshire Bacon is an inch-thick slab of unmitigated ham fat that covers an entire dinner plate. I don't know if this is an accurate picture of 1930s bacon practices in Yorkshire, or if it has been exaggerated for comedy purposes. In any case, James doesn't want any. If only there were a word he could say!

Comments

[the_rck]

If I'm recalling correctly*, the inch thick slab of ham fat was exactly what Herriot described in the book. He actually talks about what it felt like going down and about his horror at being given a second helping he didn't ask for.

Fat is really calorie dense, and I'm sure that was a factor.

*I haven't reread the books in at least 25 years.

[evelyn_b]

Oh no, poor James! At least in the show they just wrap up a hunk of fat for him to take home (since he enjoyed it so much).

I only laugh at James' inability to say no because I feel his pain.

The one and only advantage of the movies is that you get to see James' wife Helen (a Real Yorkshire Girl) happily tucking into a slab of R. Y. Bacon while James looks on in horror.

[thisbluespirit]

every time Hugh Laurie gets to play the piano,

Yes, this is very true. I'm sorry it's not working out, as I enjoyed it, overall, but it's not really the books because I don't think you could even do it, because so much is Wodehouse's voice and language.

There probably isn't anything that combines beige TV at its more charming with that amount of puppies, though. I hope at least one of your things provides some cosiness, even if not dogs!

[evelyn_b]

The Durrells has dogs, and we just met the closest thing we're going to get to Tricky Woo on Corfu (if you recall, Tricky is the little dog who looks like a decorative cushion for a face, who was apparently such a fan favorite that he was granted a Poirot-esque lifespan). If there were only 300 episodes of it, I'd say we'd found as good a substitute as we were going to get.

I wouldn't say J&W isn't working out! I'm enjoying it, anyway, and I'm pleased by how well it does most of the time on what I thought would be an impossible task: re-creating Bertie's wonderful first-person narration in an essentially third-person medium without cluttering everything up with voiceovers. It's not possible to stuff it all in, but they do what they can and make up for the rest.

[thisbluespirit]

Of course I can recall Tricky Woo! And I meant to say: James maintains an almost indestructible good cheer as he struggles with his nemeses, Real Yorkshire Bacon* and his own inability to say no. Siegfried's nemesis is people expecting him not to contradict himself every twenty minutes. Tristan's nemesis is Siegfried. is such a perfect summary! I grinned a lot. So, so true.

And, ha, I think I was really tired when you posted this (or when I read it) and so the J&W part looked more negative than it is. I hope it delivers some better terrible accents for you soon. I seem to remember, though, that there was never quite enough Hugh Laurie playing the piano. (But then how much of that would be enough?)

It's good to hear that Modern Tv has gone to the dogs, in the best possible way. :-D

[liadt]

I think Yorkshire bacon has died out! There are plenty of places in the world where they like tucking into a slab of uncooked port fat though.

[evelyn_b]

Ah, I wouldn't be surprised! I'm a little sad whenever anything dies out, though like James I didn't particularly want any.

(I'm pretty sure the R.Y.B. was cooked in some way - just totally without any statistically significant lean bits)

[liadt]

Don't be sad you could always stick several slices of streaky bacon together for the same effect to run away from;p