A television drama that asks you to come back week after invites you to share the life it depicts. Enjoying the milieu may be important than the stories per se, as is certainly the case with the great British show
All Creatures Great and Small. One episode is much like another, but to enthusiasts that scarcely matters, because the charm of hanging out with vets James Herriot, Siegfried Farnon, and Tristan Farnon, and the animals they treat, is much like visiting friends -- you look forward to it and don't want it to end. There was a time during the height of my depression when this effect was almost a little
too seductive, because I got melancholy thinking that I hadn't found my niche in life, as these fellows had. Why couldn't I have been a veterinarian in 1930s Yorkshire? I was forgetting, first, that it's a television show!! -- and, second, that I really
wouldn't want to be assisting the birth of calves at 4:00 in the morning as part of my life's work. (The show's veterinary footage was real and bloody, nothing one could ever have seen on any comparable American "family" show.) It's OK to have some pleasant vicarious experiences, but one needs to get on with one's own life, as imperfect as it is.
Still, a nice place to visit. And the clothes! -- tweeds for days, of course, Fair Isle sweaters, contrasting vests, pocket squares, pocket watches, hats. The Farnon brothers in particular had
deep closets. Robert Hardy as Siegfried is one of my all-time sartorial inspirations (and one of the finest series characters in television history). Here are Hardy (on the right) and Peter Davison as Tristan (on the left). Christopher Timothy as James is half-visible behind Hardy:
