[9.1/10] Holy hell! Where has this sort of thing been for the whole run of the show? I had no idea that All Creatures could produce something of this caliber. Bravura work all around.
The showpiece, of course, is Mrs. Hall’s emotionally freighted reunion with her son, the eponymous Edward. I wondered when the show would finally pull him out of the woodwork after their missed connection in the first season Xmas special. But this is the perfect time. The prospect of Edwarad joining the Navy, and wanting one more moment with his mother in case the worst should happen, provides a good motivation for the two of them finally coming together.
The show teases us nicely with the prospect. After that Xmas special, we’re extra sensitized to the possibility that Mrs. Hall may get stood up. We basksks in the warmth when a train attendant with hearing impairment shows her some kindness and offers her some tea.a We exalt in the glory when, right when she seems ready to give up, Edwarad arrives. And we are as chastened and stung as she is when, with so much emotion riding on it, Edward is cold and the reunion is an awkward one.
I think that’s my favorite part of this story thread (give or take the incredible acting from Anna Madeley). There are very few fireworks here. You have Mrs. Hall’s tense waiting game. And you have her rushing after Edward when it’s time for his train to leave. But for the most part, this is a an understated, intimate plot, focused on the psychological tangles between mother and son, of past and present, and the bare but piercing conversation between two people trying to sort it all out in the limited time and limited confines of a waystation between their two lives.
There is so much depth and complexity to their back and forth. Edward is convinced that all the good has been stamped out of him. He hates his father for the man he became, with insinuations of domestic abuse. He thinks his mother resented or was embarrassed by him. He believes she must have thought the worst of him to turn him into the authorities. He thinks prison drained away whatever part of him was good, something he implicitly blames Mrs. Hall for.
Mrs. Hall rejects those assertions at every turn. She tries to explain that she always saw the good in her son. She blamed herself, not him, for the unpleasantness that led to his imprisonment, with the hope, however naive, that his time under sentence might help do for him what she couldn’t. Most importantly, she never stopped loving him; she never stopped welcoming him to wherever she was; she never stopped believing in that good part of him she believed would bear out.
In the background of all these loaded exchanges is the fact that the war broke Edward’s father. It robbed him of the goodness Mrs. Hall once saw in him. And now here is another someone dear to her, going off to war, with no certainty as to what state he’ll come home in, if he comes home at all. When she tells Edward that the war won’t change him, it sounds as though she’s reassuring herself as much as she’s reassuring him.
If that were all this episode delivered, it would be more than enough. And yet we get a pair of side stories: one solid, and one almost as brilliant as the main event. One sees Helen returning to the farm to look after Jenny for the day, only to discover that her younger sister’s quit school, is farming full time, and if that weren’t enough, one of the sheep she’s been tending has foot rot.
It’s not much, but the hard choices of whether to amputate the hoof to save the sheep, and Jenny’s concern about whether she’s good or knowledgeable enough to do this on her own, give this C-story some weight. And even if I find the landing spot surprising, there’s something nice about Helen affirming her younger sister and telling her that, despite some early mistakes, she gets to decide the course of her own life and Helen will support her choices, wherever they take her.
But the B-story is even better. With Mrs. Hall out, Tristan is enlisted to do the cooking and cleaning, and Siegfried is tasked with mentoring their pint-sized intern for the day, a well-named young chap called Andrew. There’s comedy to be had, from Tristan absent-mindedly dusting in a house frock to Siegfried doting on the kiddo adorably to Tristan’s downright cute jealousy of a ten-year-old.
But there’s something deeper at play too. Tristan is jealous of the attention and appreciation Andrew receives from Siegfired, given the child’s aptitude and enthusiasm. It makes him feel not good enough. Like Edward, he feels like he must have been an unwelcome intrusion into his ersatz parent’s life. And to see a veritable stranger receive that sort of adoration and encouragement Seigfried so often denied and denies him, wounds him deep down. It’s hard to witness Siegfried acting as the father Tristan never had.
And yet, the poignant twist of the storyline is that Tristan has misread the situation. Siegfried isn’t doting on this boy as though he’s a better version of Tristan. He’s naturally attached to the child because he represents the son Siegfried never had, the one he’ll never get to have. His story of putting it off, and then only being ready when his wife had fallen ill and it was too late is heartbreaking. Again, Samuel West kills it in the acting department, underplaying the moment but giving it that much more emotional weight. And in the process, he affirms Tristan, brings the brothers closer, not further apart, by sharing something open and vulnerable with the young man who fills that role as much as anyone.
It affirms Mrs. Hall’s attachment to her son just as much. The episode doesn’t hold back on the hard truths or harsh recriminations that fly between mother and child here. Edward still doesn’t understand why his mom turned him in. Mrs. Hall seems almost desperate to try to account for it and make up. The bad blood may only run one way, but it still runs deep.
That is to the episode’s credit. So many problems on All Creatures seem serious and dramatic and intractable, but yet are somehow resolved by the end of the episode. For once, though, amid the years of resentment and regret, “Edward” acknowledges that so much hurt and complicated feeling cannot be swept away in a single conversation in the left luggage lounge.
But it can be a first step toward reconciliation and reassurance, if not a full journey in forty-four minutes. To see Edward storm off with hardly a goodbye, while his mom follows in tow practically begging him to understand that she never stopped loving him, never stopped caring about him, never stopped hoping for the best in him, tears at the heartstrings in a way I didn’t know this show was capable of.
I’m an animal lover by nature. But you could brutally knock off every adorable pet who’s ever appeared on the show, and I’m not sure it would have the same devastating impact of Edward saying he’ll make room for the tin of Mrs. Hall’s homemade cookies he’d rejected earlier, a sign of their past connection that could be made whole again, only for the poor woman to fumble the exchange and find what might be her last gift to her son tumbling onto the pavement.
Here is someone so desperate to reforge that bond, so desperate to be understood, so desperate to have any shred of connection to the child who’s rejected her that she’s nonetheless never stopped loving. And despite an attempt to grant her the barest bit of peace, the universe seems cruelly stacked against her in that moment.
And yet, it also provides unexpected moments of grace. Edward offers his mother some words of farewell as the train races away. Only, she can’t hear them over the rumble and whistle of the locomotion. His last utterance runs aground on the sound and fury taking him away from her. It’s then that an angel appears, the deaf woman who’d shown her kindness earlier, able to read Edward’s lips and share the four words that grant this saintly woman her much-deserved relief and absolution -- “I love you, Ma.”
Madeley sells the gobsmacking impact of that moment like gangbusters. In her return to Darby, she is the spitting image of someone who, by her own admission, feels lighter. And in an episode about family, there sit Mrs. Hall and Mr. Farnon, the unassuming matriarch and patriarch of the makeshift family at Skeldale House, finding solace in one another, pain in the parts of the past they’d still like to revisit and rectify, but joy in the love of the children they’ve raised. I didn’t know All Creatures Great and Small had this in them, but I’m damn glad to see it.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2023-06-14T03:07:46Z
[9.1/10] Holy hell! Where has this sort of thing been for the whole run of the show? I had no idea that All Creatures could produce something of this caliber. Bravura work all around.
The showpiece, of course, is Mrs. Hall’s emotionally freighted reunion with her son, the eponymous Edward. I wondered when the show would finally pull him out of the woodwork after their missed connection in the first season Xmas special. But this is the perfect time. The prospect of Edwarad joining the Navy, and wanting one more moment with his mother in case the worst should happen, provides a good motivation for the two of them finally coming together.
The show teases us nicely with the prospect. After that Xmas special, we’re extra sensitized to the possibility that Mrs. Hall may get stood up. We basksks in the warmth when a train attendant with hearing impairment shows her some kindness and offers her some tea.a We exalt in the glory when, right when she seems ready to give up, Edwarad arrives. And we are as chastened and stung as she is when, with so much emotion riding on it, Edward is cold and the reunion is an awkward one.
I think that’s my favorite part of this story thread (give or take the incredible acting from Anna Madeley). There are very few fireworks here. You have Mrs. Hall’s tense waiting game. And you have her rushing after Edward when it’s time for his train to leave. But for the most part, this is a an understated, intimate plot, focused on the psychological tangles between mother and son, of past and present, and the bare but piercing conversation between two people trying to sort it all out in the limited time and limited confines of a waystation between their two lives.
There is so much depth and complexity to their back and forth. Edward is convinced that all the good has been stamped out of him. He hates his father for the man he became, with insinuations of domestic abuse. He thinks his mother resented or was embarrassed by him. He believes she must have thought the worst of him to turn him into the authorities. He thinks prison drained away whatever part of him was good, something he implicitly blames Mrs. Hall for.
Mrs. Hall rejects those assertions at every turn. She tries to explain that she always saw the good in her son. She blamed herself, not him, for the unpleasantness that led to his imprisonment, with the hope, however naive, that his time under sentence might help do for him what she couldn’t. Most importantly, she never stopped loving him; she never stopped welcoming him to wherever she was; she never stopped believing in that good part of him she believed would bear out.
In the background of all these loaded exchanges is the fact that the war broke Edward’s father. It robbed him of the goodness Mrs. Hall once saw in him. And now here is another someone dear to her, going off to war, with no certainty as to what state he’ll come home in, if he comes home at all. When she tells Edward that the war won’t change him, it sounds as though she’s reassuring herself as much as she’s reassuring him.
If that were all this episode delivered, it would be more than enough. And yet we get a pair of side stories: one solid, and one almost as brilliant as the main event.
One sees Helen returning to the farm to look after Jenny for the day, only to discover that her younger sister’s quit school, is farming full time, and if that weren’t enough, one of the sheep she’s been tending has foot rot.
It’s not much, but the hard choices of whether to amputate the hoof to save the sheep, and Jenny’s concern about whether she’s good or knowledgeable enough to do this on her own, give this C-story some weight. And even if I find the landing spot surprising, there’s something nice about Helen affirming her younger sister and telling her that, despite some early mistakes, she gets to decide the course of her own life and Helen will support her choices, wherever they take her.
But the B-story is even better. With Mrs. Hall out, Tristan is enlisted to do the cooking and cleaning, and Siegfried is tasked with mentoring their pint-sized intern for the day, a well-named young chap called Andrew. There’s comedy to be had, from Tristan absent-mindedly dusting in a house frock to Siegfried doting on the kiddo adorably to Tristan’s downright cute jealousy of a ten-year-old.
But there’s something deeper at play too. Tristan is jealous of the attention and appreciation Andrew receives from Siegfired, given the child’s aptitude and enthusiasm. It makes him feel not good enough. Like Edward, he feels like he must have been an unwelcome intrusion into his ersatz parent’s life. And to see a veritable stranger receive that sort of adoration and encouragement Seigfried so often denied and denies him, wounds him deep down. It’s hard to witness Siegfried acting as the father Tristan never had.
And yet, the poignant twist of the storyline is that Tristan has misread the situation. Siegfried isn’t doting on this boy as though he’s a better version of Tristan. He’s naturally attached to the child because he represents the son Siegfried never had, the one he’ll never get to have. His story of putting it off, and then only being ready when his wife had fallen ill and it was too late is heartbreaking. Again, Samuel West kills it in the acting department, underplaying the moment but giving it that much more emotional weight. And in the process, he affirms Tristan, brings the brothers closer, not further apart, by sharing something open and vulnerable with the young man who fills that role as much as anyone.
It affirms Mrs. Hall’s attachment to her son just as much. The episode doesn’t hold back on the hard truths or harsh recriminations that fly between mother and child here. Edward still doesn’t understand why his mom turned him in. Mrs. Hall seems almost desperate to try to account for it and make up. The bad blood may only run one way, but it still runs deep.
That is to the episode’s credit. So many problems on All Creatures seem serious and dramatic and intractable, but yet are somehow resolved by the end of the episode. For once, though, amid the years of resentment and regret, “Edward” acknowledges that so much hurt and complicated feeling cannot be swept away in a single conversation in the left luggage lounge.
But it can be a first step toward reconciliation and reassurance, if not a full journey in forty-four minutes. To see Edward storm off with hardly a goodbye, while his mom follows in tow practically begging him to understand that she never stopped loving him, never stopped caring about him, never stopped hoping for the best in him, tears at the heartstrings in a way I didn’t know this show was capable of.
I’m an animal lover by nature. But you could brutally knock off every adorable pet who’s ever appeared on the show, and I’m not sure it would have the same devastating impact of Edward saying he’ll make room for the tin of Mrs. Hall’s homemade cookies he’d rejected earlier, a sign of their past connection that could be made whole again, only for the poor woman to fumble the exchange and find what might be her last gift to her son tumbling onto the pavement.
Here is someone so desperate to reforge that bond, so desperate to be understood, so desperate to have any shred of connection to the child who’s rejected her that she’s nonetheless never stopped loving. And despite an attempt to grant her the barest bit of peace, the universe seems cruelly stacked against her in that moment.
And yet, it also provides unexpected moments of grace. Edward offers his mother some words of farewell as the train races away. Only, she can’t hear them over the rumble and whistle of the locomotion. His last utterance runs aground on the sound and fury taking him away from her. It’s then that an angel appears, the deaf woman who’d shown her kindness earlier, able to read Edward’s lips and share the four words that grant this saintly woman her much-deserved relief and absolution -- “I love you, Ma.”
Madeley sells the gobsmacking impact of that moment like gangbusters. In her return to Darby, she is the spitting image of someone who, by her own admission, feels lighter. And in an episode about family, there sit Mrs. Hall and Mr. Farnon, the unassuming matriarch and patriarch of the makeshift family at Skeldale House, finding solace in one another, pain in the parts of the past they’d still like to revisit and rectify, but joy in the love of the children they’ve raised. I didn’t know All Creatures Great and Small had this in them, but I’m damn glad to see it.