All Creatures Great and Small; My Grandparents’ War; Grand Tour: A Scandi Flick

“The remake has had massive wellington boots to fill in the wake of the original, starring Christopher Timothy, Peter Davison and Robert Hardy, and it continues to do so beautifully. What better time to have a nostalgic throwback to a simpler age of decency and integrity and a host of lovely animals in the Yorkshire Dales than now? Not that there weren’t clouds darkening in the opener to series three, with war looming and young local men volunteering to do their bit. Oh, and the fact that they had to shoot a cow through the head after it injured its leg — that wasn’t particularly feelgood.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“In soap lands, these lines can only be portents of doom. Not in this show, where the writers know their audience. What we wanted was a happy, heartwarming wedding, set against the backdrop of the glorious Yorkshire Dales, and that’s what we got…Where All Creatures Great and Small really excels is in mixing the heartfelt stuff with laughs. Both Callum Woodhouse as Tristan and Samuel West as Siegfried are deft comic actors, and the pair of them trying to squirm out of responsibility for losing the rings was a joy. As was Tricki Woo making a cameo appearance on his velvet cushion.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph 

“If you needed cheering up after recent events, this should have done the trick. Pretty much every old joke about weddings was there. The best man losing the ring? Check. The happy couple made do with a bit of knotted string. Hangovers after a rowdy stag night? Check. One moment we saw James (Nicholas Ralph) downing a yard of ale, and the next thing we knew it was morning and Mrs Hall was asking Siegfried (Samuel West) why his trousers were in the pantry. Doubts before the big day? Check. Helen (Rachel Shenton) has form on this matter, but was just teasing her father this time. Nothing was seriously going to go wrong (unless you were a cow with a broken leg). You know what you’re going to get from All Creatures Great And Small: the cosiest of comfort viewing. Everything looks wonderful in Darrowby, and almost everybody has a kind word. Even the grumpy farmers of the 1980s adaptation seem to have been cleared off the moors.” 
Roland White, Daily Mail 

“Kit’s excitement on learning all this was very touching. In fact, he had only one complaint about his grandparents. ‘If they’d just passed me a few more of the tall genes, I might have been up for Bond,’ he sighed. ‘They gave me everything, but they made me 5ft 7in — about two or three inches too short.’ ”
Roland White, Daily Mail 

“This was all great stuff, so there was really no need for the programme to throw in some guff about James Bond, but it is somehow law that anything relating to British spies must include 007…Amid the sadness, though, it was the lovely written accounts of the courtships that illuminated the stories.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“This fifth film finds itself marooned, trying to return to what we may assume is its heroes’ first love – cars – but unable to get there. The forced buffoonery that has become their stock in trade is by now obligatory – setting fire to things, trashing stuff, concocting madcap schemes that are intended to fail in ways hilarious to men three or more pints to the good. What’s particularly frustrating is that within the demolition derby there’s some very good scenes just waiting to be turned in to another, better film. When one of the trio has a serious crash it is properly shocking, and the responses of the presenters and the camera crew to something unscripted are, at last, genuine – and all the more powerful for it. Likewise, the scenery as they tear through Norway, Sweden and Finland is monumental, and beautifully filmed, but it only makes the regression to the mean more irritating.”
Benji Wilson, The Telegraph