At home the veterinarians wear their natty three-piece suits and buy raffle tickets to dances without a single moment’s concern about finances. Jim is thinking about moving back to Glasgow because his parents can’t find work, and that’s about as far as those problems go. While the wonderful fictionalized memoirs of James Alfred Wight (writing as James Herriot) that inspired the series don’t hesitate to show the struggles as well as the graces of rural life in 1930s Yorkshire, the show itself offers little acknowledgement of the hardships of the Great Depression. “All Creatures” really is like taking the vacation that reality has refused to afford us. But it is also deeply untrue to the world it supposedly represents.īut it is also deeply untrue to the world it supposedly represents. Every episode is a journey into a world that has the simplicity and safety that we currently lack. On the one hand, “All Creatures” really is like taking the vacation that reality has refused to afford us. Season 2 began a few weeks ago on PBS, and with it has come a clearer sense of the trouble I have with the show. At some points it almost seemed like the show’s actual goal was to help us fall asleep. It was like “Downton Abbey,” but without any of the characters or conflict that made that other show interesting. But it never seemed to have all that much going on. The actors were great and the natural beauty of the land and the animals a welcome relief. Again, what could have been more perfect?īut if I’m being honest, there was something about that first season that didn’t sit right with me.

It was, all at once, the vacation we each yearned for, the sexy savior medical worker fantasies we were already entertaining, and the trip to Petco we needed to make. Truly, at times watching “All Creatures Great and Small” is like visiting Disneyland and thinking Anaheim is amazing when three blocks away families are living in their cars. And everything was colored by lovely golden hues, as though everyone were standing before a sunset-or trapped in amber. While questions of viruses and vaccines and the possibility of dying hung over everything in our lives, the biggest challenges faced by most of the show’s characters was animal husbandry and whether to share the feelings they had for each other. Has a new show been more perfectly timed than the reboot of the BBC classic series “All Creatures Great and Small”? Just as our struggle to maintain hope and sanity was reaching its peak in January of last year, we were invited to take a drive among the gently rolling hills and farms of 1930s Yorkshire and watch the winningly handsome young veterinarian James Herriot tend to dogs with soulful eyes and birth lambs in a sleeveless tee.

All creatures great and small original