Why ‘All Creatures Great and Small’ on PBS is a great escape

As if we lost the War of Independence even though we won it, America has long looked to our former British overlords and oversized British for cultural relief. We look to the UK as a tonic for our dull or debilitating times, gazing across the water with a sort of post-lapsarian longing for a quaint land of adorable accents and alternate spellings, village greens and of stacked stone walls, of Sherlock Holmes and Bertie Wooster, meows and views and sealing wax.

The proliferation of platforms over the past two decades and the slowdown in local production during the pandemic have made British imports ubiquitous on television (including two English-language subscription services, Acorn TV and BritBox). But for many years, they were almost the only province in PBS, widely featured under the umbrellas of “Masterpiece” (originally “Masterpiece Theater”) and “Mystery!” (now “Masterpiece Mystery”); they are still in the game.

PBS is offering a Sunday night dub of the late Victorian crime drama “Miss Scarlet & the Duke” and a new “All Creatures Big and Small”, based on the autobiographical novels by James Herriot (pseudonym of James Alfred Wight), about a Scottish vet who literally gets his feet wet and very muddy in the Yorkshire Dales in the late 1930s. Not a bad way to end your weekend, such as it can be, each series proposing resolved cases and requiring no more from the viewer than to sink into their other worlds.

In the pastoral idyll of “Creatures,” Nicholas Ralph plays James, who after many rejections finds himself tightly attached to Siegfried Farnon (Samuel West), blowing, blowing an animal doctor in the fictional village of Darrowby. Slightly wild and much younger than Siegfried’s Tristan (Callum Woodhouse, a good physical match for West) arrives after a while from college in formal dress – a character who in a more dramatic drama could be doomed to tragedy , but it’s not that series. . The wise housekeeper Mrs. Hall (Anna Madeley) subtly keeps them in order; Rachel Shenton plays the farmer’s daughter who piques James’s interest; and the late Diana Rigg joins as a very wealthy lady with a big little dog. Some characters are more troublesome than others, but there aren’t any villains here, and there’s a great pleasure just in seeing James accepted by the locals as a regular part of their lives: who doesn’t want this. validation?

Herriot’s books were previously adapted for television, also under the title “All Creatures Big and Small”, on several series and various specials from 1978 to 1990; “Young James Herriot” in 2011 depicted his college days. There have been films too, of which I haven’t seen any. (I haven’t read the novels by the way.) Even the threat of animals in distress is enough to put me off, so I approached the series with some trepidation, and there are indeed some tense moments, even of life and death with great and small creatures met here. For the most part things are going well, and this is also true of the human drama, which, despite all its passages of open conflict, passive aggression, comical missteps and quiet regret, leans towards friendship; the tone is more humorous than not, and even when things are a bit rough between the characters, the camera and soundtrack turns to the scenery for romance. (Even a tractor ride can bring sweeping ropes.) We’re practically asked to fall in love with these people and this place, and it’s an easy instruction to follow.

“Miss Scarlet & the Duke” is a six-part series that, in a contemporary way, mixes episodic cases with long-arc affairs. Created by Rachael New, this may not even be the latest in a long line of stories in which an amateur or private investigator teams up and / or fights with an official member of the police, and sub – set in which there is a romantic spark. between them – as in “Castle” or “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries” – often signified by exasperated jokes, a la Beatrice and Benedick.

Miss Scarlet (Kate Phillips, whom you may have seen in “Wolf Hall”, “Peaky Blinders” and “The Crown”), whose name of course comes from the game Clue, is the daughter of a policeman turned private investigator. who, like Jacob Marley, died to begin with but appears intermittently in his old office to advise his daughter. (He’s not a ghost – it’s not that kind of a show – except in dramatic terms; technically it’s a figment of his imagination. “Don’t be mad,” he says. “It is. you who put those words in my mouth. ”) Scarlet was raised from childhood to understand how crime works, and so, despite sexual prejudices, she is ready to go when it becomes necessary to take over the family business. The long arc mentioned above will revolve around the questions Scarlet has about her father’s death.

The Duke is Scotland Yard Inspector William Wellington (Stuart Martin, a Hugh Jackman guy), hence the nickname, which is not widely used; a former associate of his father, he is also his childhood friend and – if only for the space of a much discussed and far removed youthful kiss – almost an old flame. The usual will-they-won’t-will-they-not dynamic continues here.

Scarlet hardly cares about convenience, bustling around where she doesn’t officially belong – be it a private club, the morgue or anywhere in London alone after dark – or greeting Wellington in her own office, all Scotland Yard powerless to stop it. At the same time, she’ll exploit her 19th-century femininity every now and then, asking to smell salts or a glass of water to save time to poke around, or pat her eyelids a bit if necessary; she may depend on someone stronger than her to do punches and wrestling, although she’s the rescuer here as often, if not more often, than the rescued.

The series covers contemporary issues (women’s suffrage) and fashions (photography of death) as research progresses. There are gay-themed stories related to Andrew Gower’s Rupert, various suitor, friend, and investor in the Scarlet Agency. Ansu Kabia plays Moses, a Jamaican bouncer in what we would call a strip club, who becomes a situational ally; it’s underutilized – you could just as easily build a series around that partnership as the one in the title. And, like “All Creatures Big and Small,” “Miss Scarlet” is accompanied by a wise and supportive housekeeper (Cathy Belton, like Ivy).

It’s an easy-to-catch show that does almost everything right, looks good, has a keen pulse. The mysteries are suitably meandering but not so obscure that you won’t solve a few before the detectives. There’s a little bit of action (one episode is mostly a cat and mouse game in an abandoned prison), a little social righteousness. While it’s more melodramatic than realistic (“Stop performing!” Scarlet will cry in one scene), it’s not “dark” or gritty either. “An adventure with murder and turmoil.

Series like these celebrate both ancient times and the fact that times are changing. “The old ways are the old for a reason, boy,” a farmer full of popular medical wisdom tells James in “All Creatures Big and Small.” “These modern methods also have their merits,” replies James. It is on this fulcrum that these satisfying entertainments are balanced.