All Creatures Great and Small confronts despair like only a comforting show can

This week’s episode of all creatures big and small — The third episode of the third season, titled “Surviving Siegfried,” offered something unusual for the series: flashbacks.

Based on a series of internationally best-selling memoirs by veterinarian Alf Wight, who wrote under the pseudonym James Herriot, the show has so far focused on a sleepy, fictional corner of Darrowby in the late 1930s. It has been placed squarely in the British farming community. In Yorkshire Dales, a 21st century viewer spends his hour a week digging and transposing the issue into a gentle tale of rural animal care. The series revolves around James (Nicholas Ralph), a veterinarian. He struggles under the watchful eye of the persistent Siegfried Farnon (Samuel West). .

All of these diagrams are familiar to readers of Herriot’s books. But in 1978, when the BBC premiered the first serialized version, they first became staples of the television landscape. all creatures big and smallIt would not be appropriate to call the new series a remake of the previous one, as both take their own liberties in adapting Heriot’s books. As such, the two series have had a notable response. His two iterations of the same person, both plagued by the same righteous-world weariness, would have resonated as distinctly as they do today, 40 years ago.

“Siegfried the Survivor” transports the viewer to 1918 Belgium. The series’ typical division of operations emphasizes that World War I remains in the consciousness of the characters who are now facing World War II. There, a younger version of the typically cheerful and eccentric Siegfried — played in these segments by Andy Sellers, now seen as the solemn captain of the Royal Army around Armistice Day — sees his I am tasked with taking care of the Major’s injured horse.

“Physically speaking, he will make a full recovery,” says this younger version of Siegfried of the animal. But there is another, perhaps even greater, scar. It is “invisible damage”.

In the show’s present, another war looms, overshadowing a series that previously struck a comforting note of escapism. overtake. The previous season concluded with housekeeper Mrs. Hall (Anna Madeley) watching a Spitfire strafing the sky. Now Siegfried is being asked to care for another traumatized horse – River will never ride.

“Are you okay?” Tristan asks the obstinate vet while driving him to see River. Siegfried himself was thrown from his horse so many times that he could hardly walk, let alone drive.

“That’s a ridiculous bloody question!” muttered Siegfried. “Of course not! None of us do! Neither should we! Damn the state of the world — if that’s the case, there’s something wrong with us!” It fits, but it might also resonate with modern audiences. How many of us can really feel okay given our own damn state of the world? an antique all living things big and small We have to balance our status as a comforting tonic in the chaotic and painful 21st century with the realization that the world is always more complex than we like.

43 years ago this month, when the BBC premiered the third season of the original telecast, the world was a lot less complicated and painful. all creatures big and smallThe season aired less than a year into Margaret Thatcher’s term as Prime Minister (the original series’ run coincided with her 11-year tenure and less than a year). . Shaking from the unprecedented year of strikes, its peak can be traced back to what is called the Winter of Discontent.

Image: PBS Masterpiece

That season’s fifth episode, “If Wishes Were Horses,” works in parallel, if not the basis, for “Surviving Siegfried.” Again, Siegfried (here played by Robert Hardy) is seen tending to the horse, but this time the infection is a hoof infection as opposed to River’s mental illness. It’s his element of dealing with creatures that makes the operation even dizzying. “A summer morning in an English village,” he smiles. “That’s not true.”

“If you don’t have time to evaluate it, it’s not,” agrees James (Christopher Timothy).

However, the bliss is soon shattered by the news that two local boys have left to join the RAF. “I think it’s their duty,” says the boys’ father, but Siegfried is visibly upset. “Politicians have failed,” he mutters as the boys head off to enlist. “Now it’s up to people like them…to pick up the pieces.”

“If Wishes Were Horses” aired in January 1980, mere weeks after the first British steelworkers left their jobs in over half a century. That strike lasted his 13 weeks and ended just days before the third season. all creatures big and small The world’s winter complaints form a strong contrast with the serene series. The finale, which bids these characters farewell to the eight years that passed before the fourth season, ends with an image of Siegfried and James also enlisting. Siegfried mutters.

The same can be said about the world into which the third season of all creatures big and small Entering the fourth year of the COVID-19 pandemic, it premiered at a time when global fascism was normalizing at breakneck speed. The series premiered in September 2020, and less than a year after the pandemic, James Herriot and his cartoonists decided to create these extensive collections to guide us toward something like hope. It might be a little convenient to suggest spawning in moments of despair, but… well, if the horseshoe fits.

Image: PBS Masterpiece

In Belgium, Siegfried was forced to oversee the mass slaughter of horses, which were deemed essentially worthless after they had finished carrying soldiers into battle. was asked to do the same to River, who is a Sieg The fleet puts its foot down.

“Surely there is no need to repeat the mistakes and cruelty of the past!” he pleads with this man, whom he still calls Major. When an older man grumpily asks if he doesn’t mind being dumped many times, Siegfried replies emphatically, “Any number of times.”

Siegfried mentions his determination to help River, but his determination is more generalized. When asked to break the horse, he told the Major that it was actually his job to restore the animal. It’s the same task we all wake up to every day: We have to do what little we can to rebuild a world that feels like it’s falling apart so quickly that the pieces might crumble in your hands.

“We have to accept that, Siegfried,” James told his original series partner. “There really is no other way.”

“Of course you are,” agrees Siegfried. “The human animal is the most amazingly adaptable of all animals.” Whether Siegfried takes his word for it is unknown. He looks like he’s going to cry a lot when he says it. But “Siegfried the Survivor” ends with something close to catharsis. The river allows itself to be ridden. The Major’s horse is saved.

In one of the flashback segments seen midway through “Siegfried the Survivor”, we learn that only one horse has returned from Belgium. The writers chose to name the horse Orpheus, and it’s clear why. Like Siegfried himself, this creature, though so big and so small, has set foot in hell. Now his job is to reappear without looking back.

all creatures big and small Available on PBS Masterpiece.