Linda Zachri

I enjoyed the books by James Herriot and I enjoyed the original series, especially when it made the stories in the books come to life, but I did not enjoy the new “All Creatures Great and Small” even though I tried to. I felt the characters were miscast, especially Siegfried, Tristan and Mrs. Hall. There was even a kind of romance between Siegfried and Mrs. Hall - oh, please! Diana Rigg was delightful as Mrs. Pumphery, but even much of the fun with that slightly eccentric lady and her sometimes odd pets was gone. Most of the humour that made the books and the original series was gone. Besides taking itself very seriously indeed, the new series was also replete with various types of anachronisms and the episodes seemed to be made up of a mishmash of bits and pieces of stories from different books tossed together in single episodes as some kind of story salad. Artificially introduced angst, no doubt by a scriptwriter who saw himself as superior to the original author, did nothing to help the situation. The Christmas wedding at the end (Gee, Christmas AND a wedding!) was so stereotypical, sugary and sentimental, I lost interest. The only reason I gave this series 2 stars instead of one was because I often found the photography quite lovely. As they say, “Even a broken clock is right twice a day.”