All Creatures, Great & Small (C5, Thurs) is our best homegrown period drama. Without the budget or global reach that Bridgeton has, this often-poignant Channel 5 series, set in the sweeping beauty of the Yorkshire Dales knocked the spots of all the competition this week, and would surely have brought a tear to most people’s eyes with a classic homecoming story.
Unlike film, directors for TV receive few accolades for TV shows. But here in All Creatures, Brian Percival is the exception. When I saw his name on the opening credits I knew we were in for a treat as he’s worked on such costume hits as Downton Abbey, and North & South. Originally from Liverpool and trained in Wrexham, he’s an Emmy Award winner, too.
So punching well above its weight, All Creatures managed this series to attract fellow Emmy winner Jeremy Swift, from Ted Lasso. Here he played a dyed-in-the-wool Yorkshire type who’s organising the air raid wardens in the village. A bit grumpy, a bit fastidious, a bit sexist – it is 1947 after all — Mr Bosworth is a character who’s being set up for a minor fall. His first mission was to prevent Mrs Hall from becoming a warden but he failed in the end. He grudgingly accepted his defeat. Mrs Hall will probably lead him from a burning building in the next episode. He will reluctantly accept her kind offer of rescue.
But the real drama was happening elsewhere at RAF Abingdon, where James Herriot (Nicholas Ralph) was doing his bit as a pilot until he was rudely interrupted by brucellosis. Who? That’ll teach him to getting so familiar with that herd.
All of this eventually led to Mr Herriot’s homecoming, in which he was welcomed by Carmody’s comedy dog with outstretched paw, Herriot’s new baby, his stunned wife, Mrs Hall’s flawless dinner and Siegfried’s tot of whisky. Probably in that order, too. There wasn’t a dry eye.
Finally, let’s celebrate the creativity of the writers too. The main plotline back in the village of Darrowby involved a local cat hooked on narcotics. To think, they used to be satisfied with the saucer of milk!
Elsewhere this was “stripping week”. Agreed, it wasn’t published as such but TV wanted you to watch their show – and forget about all other channels. Fat chance.
First up was Nightsleeper (BBC1, Sun-Fri), described by some as a “blockbuster”. It’s anyone’s guess what this means, but essentially, it’s a production with epic proportions. Okay, I might have missed that. It was an overnight train from Glasgow to London, not the Orient Express.
Actor Joe Cole played a Met detective away from home who found himself on the service when all hell broke loose. Or, in terms of this drama, a device was found with a few wires sticking out. Ooooh…!
I mentally switched off. When I see something like this it simply reminds me of the kitchen drawer that we all have where you keep your old phone chargers, and swimming goggles.
Supposedly this tiny box was going to make our trains run very fast, or similar. Really? Most times we can’t get them to leave the station.
Nightsleeper was a little too close to the sequence in The Bodyguard when a bomb with a timer was found on a train. A tea trolley would do just fine.
And finally why does everybody tackling cybersecurity crises do shouty video calls in public – “Hi everyone, I’m tackling some really important crime here. Gotta go!”
The Wives (C5, Mon-Fri) were competing for our attention as well with slightly less in its armoury. Set on sunny Malta, we were dealing with the mystery of Annabel, who had disappeared a year before without explanation.
Who can blame her. She was probably fed up with the Morgan family altogether who were boozing themselves into oblivion while lying to each other.
Actors Sally Lindsay, Tamsin Outhwaite and Angela Griffin starred in a show that needed more than sunshine to grab us.
Finally, the show for grown-up reality fans, My Mum, Your Dad (ITV1, Mon-FRI) made a triumphant return to the box doing much the same as it did in the first series, by bringing together nice people who had bad luck in relationships and marriage.
But aren’t the children just as interesting, if not more so. And so grown-up, using words like “responsibility”. Scary.
As nice as the show is, it can still make you look like a wally. This was nice Andy on exercise.
“I love exercise, and as I’ve got older, it’s become more vigorous, twice a day,” he told Maria.
Hilariously, she reciprocated about her own relationships after her break-up, with, “I just wanted to have good sex.”
They’re made for each other!
