{"id":47088,"date":"2023-01-23T03:02:40","date_gmt":"2023-01-23T03:02:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pley2win.com\/featured-news\/all-creatures-great-and-small-confronts-despair-like-only-a-comforting-show-can\/"},"modified":"2023-01-23T03:02:40","modified_gmt":"2023-01-23T03:02:40","slug":"all-creatures-great-and-small-confronts-despair-like-only-a-comforting-show-can","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pley2win.com\/?p=47088","title":{"rendered":"All Creatures Great and Small confronts despair like only a comforting show can"},"content":{"rendered":"


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This week\u2019s episode of All Creatures Great and Small<\/em> \u2014 the third episode of the third season, entitled \u201cSurviving Siegfried\u201d \u2014 offered something rare for this series: flashbacks.<\/p>\n

The show, adapted from the internationally bestselling series of memoirs by veterinary surgeon Alf Wight, who wrote under the pen name James Herriot, has thus far been situated squarely within the late 1930s in the sleepy English farming community of Darrowby, a fictionalized corner of the Yorkshire Dales where 21st-century viewers might burrow away for an hour a week and let their troubles be replaced by gentle tales of rural animal care. The series centers on veterinary surgeon James (Nicholas Ralph), who toils under the watchful eye of the persnickety Siegfried Farnon (Samuel West), whom he struggles to please \u2014 though not as much as Siegfried\u2019s layabout brother, Tristan (Callum Woodhouse), does. <\/p>\n

All of these figures are familiar to readers of Herriot\u2019s books. But they first became staples of the TV landscape in 1978, when the BBC premiered the first serialized adaptation of All Creatures Great and Small<\/em>. To call the new series a remake of the prior one would be inapt, as both take their own liberties in adapting Herriot\u2019s books. But in Siegfried\u2019s awareness of the traumas of war, the two series do feature remarkable echoes. Two iterations of the same man are both beset by the same righteous world-weariness, one that would have resonated just as clearly four decades ago as it does today.<\/p>\n

\u201cSurviving Siegfried\u201d transports the viewer to Belgium in 1918, a schism in the series\u2019 typical operations that underscores just how present the First World War remains in the consciousness of characters now facing down the Second. There, a younger version of the typically jovially eccentric Siegfried \u2014 played in these segments by Andy Sellers, and now seen as a solemn captain in the Royal Armed Forces around the time of Armistice Day \u2014 is tasked with caring for his major\u2019s wounded horse.<\/p>\n

\u201cPhysically speaking, he\u2019ll make a full recovery,\u201d this younger version of Siegfried remarks of the animal. But there\u2019s another, perhaps even greater wound: \u201cthe damage we can\u2019t see.\u201d <\/p>\n

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In the show\u2019s present, another war looms, casting a shadow over a series that has previously struck a comforting note of escapism. Jeeps pass the car as Siegfried shuttles between Darrowby and the outlying farms; the previous season closed with his housekeeper, Mrs. Hall (Anna Madeley) watching a spitfire strafe the sky. Now, Siegfried has been called upon to care for another traumatized horse \u2014 River, who will not be ridden \u2014 and though the oncoming brutality has not yet touched these particular creatures, its specter dominates the season.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you all right?\u201d Tristan asks the obstinate vet while driving him back to see River. Siegfried himself has been thrown from the horse so many times he can barely walk, let alone operate a vehicle. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a stupid bloody question!\u201d Siegfried snaps. \u201cOf course I\u2019m not! None of us is! Nor should we be! State of the damn world \u2014 there\u2019d be something wrong with us if we were!\u201d The line fits the character and story, but it might well strike a chord for present-day viewers as well. How many of us can truly feel all right given the state of our own damn world? Thus, the gently antic All Creatures<\/em> Great and Small <\/em>must balance its status as a comforting tonic to a messy and painful 21st century and its awareness of the fact that the world has always been more complex than any of us would prefer.<\/p>\n

The world was no less complex and painful 43 years ago this month, when the BBC premiered the third season of the original televised All Creatures Great and Small<\/em>. The season aired less than a year into Margaret Thatcher\u2019s term as Prime Minister (the run of the original series would match up with her 11 years in office to within a year), amid a time of tremendous unrest in the United Kingdom, a nation still reeling from a year of unprecedented strikes, the peak of which would be retrospectively termed the Winter of Discontent. <\/p>\n

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That season\u2019s fifth episode, titled \u201cIf Wishes Were Horses,\u201d serves as a parallel to, if not the basis for, \u201cSurviving Siegfried.\u201d Again, we see Siegfried (here played by Robert Hardy) caring for a horse, though this time the infection is of the hoof as opposed to River\u2019s spiritual malady. Siegfried is in his element dealing with the creature, and even leaves the operation feeling giddy. \u201cSummer\u2019s morning in an English village,\u201d he beams. \u201cNothing like it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNot if you\u2019ve got time to appreciate it,\u201d James (Christopher Timothy) agrees.<\/p>\n

But the bliss is swiftly shattered by the news that two local boys are off to join up with the RAF themselves. \u201cI reckon it\u2019s their duty,\u201d the boys\u2019 father remarks, but Siegfried is visibly shaken. \u201cThe politicians have failed,\u201d he mutters as the boys head off to enlist. \u201cNow it\u2019s up to people like them\u2026 to pick up the pieces.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Wishes Were Horses\u201d aired in January 1980, just a few weeks after Britain\u2019s steel workers walked off the job for the first time in more than half a century. That strike would last 13 weeks, ending just a few days before the third season of All Creatures Great and Small<\/em> did, the world\u2019s wintertime discontent once more forming a bracing contrast with a gentle series. The finale, which bid these characters adieu for the eight years that elapsed before the fourth season, ends on the image of Siegfried and James off to enlist as well. \u201cNothing\u2019s certain anymore,\u201d Siegfried murmurs toward the end of the episode.<\/p>\n

The same could be said of the world into which the third season of All Creatures Great and Small <\/em>has premiered, as we enter the fourth year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and amid a rising tide of global fascism that\u2019s becoming normalized with shocking swiftness. The series premiered in September 2020, less than a year into the pandemic, and while it might be a bit convenient to suggest James Herriot and his comic entourage emerge during these moments of widespread despair to guide us toward something like hope\u2026 Well, if the horseshoe fits.<\/p>\n

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In Belgium, we learn, Siegfried was forced to oversee the mass slaughter of horses deemed essentially worthless once they were finished carrying soldiers into battle. Now called upon by his onetime commanding officer to do the same to River, a racehorse that won\u2019t race (\u201cGood for nought but dog food,\u201d an onlooker grumbles as Siegfried tries to tame the wild thing), Siegfried puts his foot down. <\/p>\n

\u201cSurely we don\u2019t need to repeat the mistakes and cruelties of the past!\u201d he begs this man he still calls Major. When the older man gruffly asks how many times he\u2019s willing to be thrown off, Siegfried responds with certainty: \u201cAs many as it takes.\u201d <\/p>\n

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