New All Creatures Great and Small Channel 5

[icelolly99]

Anyone else looking forward to this? Starts tonight at 9pm.

It's also the position of housekeeper. The class divisions were a big deal then.

I think it's a little airbrushing of history that I don't particularly like but I enjoy the programme overall.

The books have the same stories pretty much and are a really pleasant and funny read.

My point Pobble is that Mrs Hall is a housekeeper. She would not have played games or sat at the same table with them for meals. Just wouldn’t have happened.

@Pobblebonk

This is set in the 30s though so tend to agree about the housekeeper being more aloof

True about the housekeeper. The rest of it seems quite authentic. It's better than the previous series in the casting of James and Helen imo. It always irritated me that they made James a middle aged Englishman instead of a 23 year old Scot, and I'm glad they've actually allowed Helen to be a young Yorkshire farmer, rather than a middle class woman in pearls.

I always found Helen in the original series really smug looking.

Oh my!! The old series 1 is on Drama currently. Just seen that first episode can be downloaded.

Loving it despite a few wrinkles

Lovely article in the Daily Mail today about how James's children, Jim and Rosie, now in their 70s, are loving this new series and say it's really realistic.

Yes! Wasn't that nice. They're loving it. I know that the family were not happy with previous casting.

@ImAncient

My point Pobble is that Mrs Hall is a housekeeper. She would not have played games or sat at the same table with them for meals. Just wouldn’t have happened.

I think this is because, and I know I keep saying this, there is going to be something (whether properly explored or not) between Siegfried and Mrs Hall.

Which would explain no haughty women about looking for Siegfried and being withering to James.

I watch on a Sunday evening, so just caught up with Tricky Woo. I thought it was really funny! I'm going to disagree with most posters and say I think this Tristan is good! Very good scenes with Siegfried. I thought the story with the Irish man and his dog was very touching. Deaf because of the trenches, and too poor to buy dog food.

It made me laugh with the German shepherd.
I knew he was just a big softie the German shepherd

Yes I liked how Siegfried and Tristan are both a soft touch, they treated the veterans dog for free and then gave him a massive bag of free food.

I watched it again tonight 😁

I'm not a fan of Dorothy to be honest...😆

We haven't started watching this series yet but I want to ask a question from all of you if I may. Dd has emetophobia and immediately goes off a programme if anyone throws up in it. Sadly The Durrells went out if favour very suddenly, even though she was thoroughly enjoying it up ti that point!
So has anyone thrown up in All Creatures Great and Small thus far??? Thank you!

I don't think so glee!

@gleegeek

We haven't started watching this series yet but I want to ask a question from all of you if I may. Dd has emetophobia and immediately goes off a programme if anyone throws up in it. Sadly The Durrells went out if favour very suddenly, even though she was thoroughly enjoying it up ti that point! So has anyone thrown up in All Creatures Great and Small thus far??? Thank you!

James has a hangover at one point but there was no vomiting!

No vomiting so far. No blood or guts or hands visibly up rear ends

Thank you! Blood and guts and gore are all fine, it's just vomiting that's the issue. It seems that everything seems to need a gratuitous upchucking scene, almost always unnecessarily!

I've noticed more of that on tv, too! You never used to see it. I mentioned the other stuff in case there was general queasiness!

I don't remember any vomiting in The Durrells; we watched that quite recently. I'm normally averse to such scenes too. This weeks Ghosts episode though, if you watch that @gleegeek .....(it's right at the very end of the ep though)

@gleegeek I've just remembered....the doctors wife had severe morning sickness!

I think the way Mrs Hall is portrayed is okay. The series is set in the early 1930s and even then it would not be that uncommon for a "professional" like a vet or Doctor to have a servant to help with house/kitchen (usually in the form of a "daily help").

Remember Mrs Hall takes an "expanded" live in role as Siegfried as is widower and the helping with the surgery/telephone would have often have been done by the Vet's wife and as he would be attending out of hours calls etc a live in "help" who did cooking etc was probably essential. You could imagine that with just the the two of them (occasional short lived assistant) they could be more like friends rather than master and servant.

Obviously Siegfried is from a well off, middle class background (able to fund his brother, pay for his cars and large surgery etc) was a RCVS officer in WW1.

All creatures great and small (TV) is actually set at quite an interesting time in the 1930s, there was a great deal of rural poverty (world depression) and farms struggled - it would have been difficult for some farmers to pay their vet bills and it would have been important for vet's to develop their more "lucrative" work such as pet and especially non agricultural equine work.

Lots of farms in the 1930s would not have been that different to farms in say the early 1900s with only hints of modernisation due to the depression.

What "saved" and changed agriculture was ww2 - farmers had MUCH more money by the 1950s (especially those who owned their land vs tenant farmers) and the pace of change to mechanised farming was massive. This period is known as the second agricultural revolution.

Alf Wright started work in 1939 so would have seen these changes first hand and even at this time, some vets worried about the change farming to a more industrial industry and the impact on animal welfare.

Post ww2 also saw changes in land ownership with big estates broken up and some tenant farmers getting ownership of the land they farmed, but lots more under less benign landlords too.

Apologies for the essay!