The Larkins
When it was announced that there was going to be a new adaptation of H.E. Bates's Pop Larkin books I was honestly baffled. I know reboots and reimaginings are all the rage, but the early nineties television series for ITV, The Darling Buds of May, is a legit television classic and made a star of Catherine Zeta-Jones while further cementing David Jason and Pam Ferris's status as British living legends. In fact it was one of the first big British television series that I was able to get through Netflix in the days of DVDs by mail. For some reason the discs I kept getting for episodes five and six which adapted A Breath of French Air always arrived damaged. But I persevered and eventually, as in at least a month after starting the episodes, I got to see Anna Massey in all her glory. Because so much in life comes down to, is Anna Massey in it? And if the answer is yes then I have to see it. This has backfired a few times, but for every production of The Robinsons there's a He Knew He Was Right. But when Bradley Walsh was announced as Pop Larkin after his successful run on Doctor Who I knew I wanted to watch the newest adaptation. And then they cast Sabrina Bartlett as his daughter Mariette. Everyone has actors they can't stand. They see them and they just can't watch them. Sabrina Bartlett is that for me. The only role I've ever liked her in was in Poldark, because she was murdered. When Arya was wearing her face on Game of Thrones I couldn't handle it. Then when she showed up on Bridgerton, hell no. Other shows she has been in over the years I have successfully blocked memory of her from. Like Victoria, she was on that!?! Guess I can't rewatch it. But then I got Acorn so I could see the final season of Doc Martin and I try to use my subscription services to the max so I thought, what could it hurt? It's only seven episodes. Even if I hate it it's only a week! But then I was surprised. I loved the new adaptation. Somehow Sabrina Bartlett was perfectly cast as the headstrong Mariette. In fact every single member of the cast was perfect. Sure, this a rural idyll, an England that never was, where everyone is happy and there's more than plenty on the table and tax men become family members, but I didn't care, I fell in love with the Larkins! And then tragedy struck! As in scandal, chaos, all was not right in Kent! Rumors abounded that all was strife behind the scenes. Sabrina Bartlett quit and was replaced with someone cast just because they had the hair and teeth. But Sabrina Bartlett wasn't the real problem, apparently that was the actor playing Charley, Tok Stephen. There might have even been inappropriate pictures texted to Sabrina so everyone was naturally shocked that he wasn't fired and was coming back for season two. But the truth is he was sidelined. The show lost something of it's spark. They didn't want another romance to be the focus of the second season so they asininely decided that Pop would go to prison. While this is actually what happens in the third book in the series it just felt depressing and contrived and too much of an overbearing story arc. Add to that everything seemed to be overly lite to look all sunny when it wasn't, overall the second series felt like a badly put on stage play, all surface, no depth. Continued rumors of tension behind the scenes meant that this is the last this iteration of The Larkins will grace out screens. Of course Bradley Walsh took the bullet and said it was due to his busy schedule. Very gentlemanly of you Bradley, Pop would be pleased.
Country Matters started with delight and surprise. So many favorite actors as fresh faced youths! There's Ian McKellen, Peter Firth, looking about twelve but actually nineteen, and yes, that is Isobel Crawley! It took me about fifteen minutes to confirm it was indeed Penelope Wilton in her second ever television appearance. I mention it to save you the fifteen minutes of confusion that I grappled with. But once you get past these revelations and the discordantly cheery theme music you come to the realization that this series is nothing but unrelenting pain and misery. The second episode almost did me in. I never give up on shows and "The Mill" made me want to throw in the towel. Every single episode just grinds you down with despair. Rape, unwanted pregnancies, prison, disfigurement, stillbirth, lies, affairs, suicide, unhappy marriages, on and on and on, grinding you down more and more. Many people complain that this DVD release contains only eight of the thirteen episodes produced, famously omitting episodes staring Upstairs, Downstairs favorites Pauline Collins and Meg Wynn Owen, as well as a second Peter Firth episode, but most importantly episodes starring Jeremy Brett and Michael Kitchen. All I can say is that if they are anywhere near as depressing as the eight episodes I slogged through we are all better off without them in our lives. Because I can tell you now, there is no way in hell I could have made it through five more episodes, I barely made it through these. Going back to the worst of the lot, "The Mill," it's about a poor girl no longer wanted under her parents feet so she's sent off into service where she dutifully attends to her bedridden mistress while being raped every night by her mistress's husband. She of course gets pregnant and is run off home. Why would ANYONE want to watch this? Episode after episode shows the perils of pregnancy for unwed women, but this was wantonly cruel. All these episodes are adapted from the works of A.E. Coppard and H.E. Bates, and after Bates's "The Mill" I came to dread his episodes, despite the fact he wrote the delightful The Darling Buds of May. Which makes it extra ironic that the ONLY story that could be said to have a semblance of a HEA was his "The Ring of Truth." So if you REALLY feel like after this last year you could do with a big old helping of despair, might I suggest Country Matters for your viewing masochism?
