The coming war
We've been making our way through season three of All Creatures Great and Small, and through it all runs the shadow of the approaching war. It's a glimpse of history and of culture that you very rarely see - the years leading up to WWII, the sort of every day approaches to it. It's pulling some of the very best acting out of Robert Hardy that I've ever seen. It hasn't been a main plot yet, but there are little things in the background. The one girl Tristan is ever really serious about breaks off their relationship because she doesn't think it's a good idea to try to start a household with a war on the horizon. There was a brief mention of a couple of local boys headings south to join up, and it hits Siegfried right between the eyes. And we're getting little snippets about people having increased trouble managing their land and livestock with family members gone off. Siegfried has been absolutely freaking out (in a subtle way) and Tristan thinks there isn't going to be a war at all. It finally just came home to James in tonight's episode when the news came in that England has formed an alliance with Poland.
I dunno, it's been a bunch of really small, subtle things, but it's this constant and growing shadow over the series. It is amazingly well done. And...at the end of this season James is going to be drafted into the RAF. Given how it's been being played thus far, I can't imagine how Siegfried is going to react, except that he's bound to be utterly devastated.
And most of this is not even from the books, because he absolutely refused to write about the war. But it rings very true. James Herriot was actually a consultant on the series, and it may be that we're seeing glimpses that never made it into the novels because at the time they were still too close.
Anyway, it's...getting very intense all up in my gentle yorkshire series. Cool, but...yeah.
I dunno, it's been a bunch of really small, subtle things, but it's this constant and growing shadow over the series. It is amazingly well done. And...at the end of this season James is going to be drafted into the RAF. Given how it's been being played thus far, I can't imagine how Siegfried is going to react, except that he's bound to be utterly devastated.
And most of this is not even from the books, because he absolutely refused to write about the war. But it rings very true. James Herriot was actually a consultant on the series, and it may be that we're seeing glimpses that never made it into the novels because at the time they were still too close.
Anyway, it's...getting very intense all up in my gentle yorkshire series. Cool, but...yeah.