Young James Herriot (TV Mini Series) Episode #1.2 (2011) User Reviews

See you Jimmy! - James Herriot as a humourless boring prig...

[ianlouisiana · 1/10 · 21 December 2011]

I preferred him when he was a nice middle - class Englishman practising in Yorkshire and had a catchy signature tune and a wife who used a lot of Oxo cubes. Instead the BBC's Christmas treat to us viewers this year was a 3 part inducement to suicide apparently filmed through a green filter featuring an actor who has clearly studied at the Jerry Lewis school of idiocy. Set in Glasgow in 1933 it purported to tell of Herriott's early life at Veterinary College where they had clearly never heard of Elizabeth Garret Anderson or Emily Pankhurst.The staff were fairly beastly to women students,especially James's chum "Whirly" (don't ask),a Scottish aristocrat of the type that - in real life - they would have bent over backwards to accommodate.But enough of reality,this is entertainment...right? Well,that is if you're entertained by Scotland's worst vet misdiagnosing horses and cows,first world war veterans contemplating hanging themselves from the bough of a tree because Herriot had wrongly blamed them for poisoning the animals"Yer coos are dying,it's the arrrsenic" - honestly, I felt like asking him to make room for me on the branch. Borrowing from elements as diverse as "Doctor in the House","The remains of the day" and "The prime of Miss Jean Brodie",it manages to be nowhere near as good as any of them. Probably the worst drama you will see over Christmas.