J B F – Google

For my self as a man born in Yorkshire who remembers society back in the 1950's the original stories of both the books and the original TV series perfectly captured the realities of rural Yorkshire folk in terms of their overall behaviour, the accepted norm for gender roles, the overall demographic and the farmers humour very accurately indeed, also strong men and women were not uncommon, both the TV series and the books nailed 1930's to 1950's rural Yorkshire, James Herriot despite being a Scot was apparently very happy with Christopher Timothy's very English portrayal, such artistic changes were necessary as so many real people the characters were based on were not only still alive but actually working, as for the remake, it is great for those who know nothing of that time and place and want a show that has contemporary values set in a world long ago, with exaggerated strong female characters that parody the genuinely strong women of that time and place, the character of James himself is very accurately played but the rest of the show is very much an adaptation for a modern audience, whether it's good or not, or better than the original or not is purely a matter of opinion, for me the new series is OK but nothing special.

Douglas Adams untimely death cut short a brilliantly creative life, his fiction in particular the hg2g series was a refreshingly ambitious and surrealistic satire on our world and our place in it, as relevant today as it was way back when it was originally written. Eoin Colfer has shown great courage with this sequel, as a successful writer in his own right, he had no axe to grind by doing this except to round off the series using many of D A's notes to achieve this. Many people have criticised this book simply because it wasn't written by D A.These same critics would have complained about any writers efforts. Although not written as I believe Douglas Adams would write it ( and why would it be ?) I thoroughly enjoyed it. Ignore the whiners and the moaners and make up your own minds. I believe that Douglas Adams would give Eoin Colfer a pat on the back and say "well done mate, well done".