'All Creatures Great and Small' Season 2 - TV Review

Review of the first season. As with the first season, this one consists of six episodes and a Christmas special - each of which are a little under an hour in length.

The story is about James Herriot (a stand-in for the original book series author, Alf Wight), a Scottish vet who finds a job in the Yorkshire Dales in the late 1930s working at an established practise. On the plus side, Alf Wight's latest reincarnation has recovered his Scottish accent - something that was magicked away in the previous TV series. His boss is Siegfried Farnon - played by Samuel West, with Siegfried being a stand-in for Wight's partner Donald Sinclair. Farnon is often described as eccentric (which is how he's portrayed in the books) but when West was asked if Sinclair was eccentric, he replied "Oh no - he was mad." Wight apparently toned Sinclair's behaviour down significantly when he created Farnon. Other important characters include Siegfried's brother Tristan, played by Callum Woodhouse - a good vet who likes a good party and is struggling to complete his degree, the housekeeper Audrey Hall (Anna Madeley) who keeps the peace in the house, and Helen Alderson (Rachel Shenton) who's the daughter of a local farmer and James' love interest.

Having started watching this because I was looking for something low key and not stressful (because we were in the middle of COVID-19), it may be slightly hypocritical to complain that I'm now unhappy with it because it's unrealistically up-beat. He's a vet - animals sicken and die sometimes, but hardly at all in this show.