Kenneth Bruce Cox

What a missed opportunity. I was expecting something along the lines of a Catherine Cookson novel… slightly clumsy but with an engaging, believable script and sympathetic characters acting in ways and with mores befitting the times. I was not re-assured however by the fact that the producers had also made the new All Creatures Great and Small… a fantastic original series initially re-worked very successfully but now reduced to an over-sentimental cloying drama. So, where to begin? Modern actors spouting modern lines with modern affectations… just a soap drama in period clothing then. Yorkshire folk with not a credible accent between them. Over clean, Oliver-type stage clothing and sets. Vast amounts of money made by selling a few fried fish meals at tu’pence a go (the £5 they made on their second day would have been equivalent to £800 in today’s money). Investments magically transforming a few tins of pennies into a quarter of a million pounds (40 million today). A Marquis hob-nobbing with vulgar peasants, albeit ones with money. Altogether unwatchable, poorly written, unbelievable and absolute pants. I could seriously have done better myself, and I’m a retired maths teacher!