TV Series Book Adaptations

The new season of the current TV series ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL has just begun on PBS. When this remake was first announced, my initial reaction was, "Why?!" The original multi-season series, covering all James Herriot's fictionalized memoirs, was as nearly pefect as a book-to-film adaptation could possibly be. It struck me somewhat the way proposals to remake GONE WITH THE WIND have. In fact, there seems slightly more justification for the latter. A miniseries could include details from the novel that couldn't fit into even the epic-length 1939 movie, such as the subplots concerning Scarlett's sisters; also, Scarlett's two older children could appear, or at least her son, whose birth makes her ability to deliver Melanie's baby alone more plausible.

Well, we're enjoying the revamped ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL anyway, and it does have fresh elements that appeal to me. James is appropriately portrayed as distinctly Scottish, and we meet his parents. The housekeeper, Mrs. Hall, gets a larger role and a backstory, involving a strained relationship with her grown son. Mrs. Pumphrey, while still doting on Tricki-Woo, has more depth as a character, although at the cost of some of the humor in the original. On the other hand, I'm not altogether happy with this portrayal of Siegfried. Why make him a morose, rather antisocial widower instead of a cheerful bachelor? Mrs. Hall's situation injects plenty of family drama already. Moreover, at the beginning of the series this Siegfried strikes me as too harsh on James and especially Tristan. He has only reluctantly hired an assistant and initially seems to be looking for an excuse to get rid of James, another example of unnecessary drama with no basis in the books. More importantly, I feel the balance between animal-centered plotlines and human-centered material tilts too far toward the latter, compared to the books and the original series.

Still, the on-location Yorkshire setting is beautiful, the characters are engagingly acted, and the stories are heartwarming, so on balance I'd recommend it to fans of the books.

Maybe the creators of the show believed there would have been little point in producing another adaptation strictly faithful to the books when the earlier series did that so well it could hardly be improved upon. Similarly, after the superb Sherlock Holmes series starring Jeremy Brett in the 1980s and early 90s -- deliberately kept as true to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's works as feasible -- subsequent TV adaptations of the Great Detective have explored alternate interpretations of the character in new settings rather than trying to improve on Brett's definitive performance. I can grudgingly accept this rationale as justifying violation of my principle that the main purpose of a film adaptation of a book is to render the source text as faithfully as possible. Otherwise, why bother? -- just write your own story.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.