Photo: Helen Williams/PBS
This episode makes you think about what type of person you are. Are you a Bosworth or a That Lady Who Paints Her Cows Because She Doesn’t Want to Get Fined? There is no third option. Mr. Bosworth, the local warden, wants to protect local citizens from running into cows during a blackout. This makes sense, but that means he has the cows’ owners painting stripes on them with lead paint, and Siegfried is mad about it. Bosworth and Siegfried are already enemies because Skeldale House has some curtains that don’t stay closed, so a light is showing. There’s a war on, Siegfried!! And Mrs. Hall is a blackout warden! Think of the optics.
Siegfried will not think of the optics, but he will think of staying up past midnight for Mrs. Hall to get home. It’s because he loves her, you see. I can’t believe we’re on season five and I have to keep banging this drum. Think of what we’ve survived. That one lady. Gerald. Probably some other people I’ve forgotten. Now we’re five years along, Mrs. Hall has gotten officially divorced, and Siegfried is slowly realizing he doesn’t want to end up like Bosworth, all grumpy about unpainted cows.
Our other characters are off visiting farms. Before heading out for the day, James finds Siegfried reading about hemorrhagic septicemia to Jimmy. “It’s his favorite,” Siegfried says. Helen plans to help her dad and Jenny with moving their flock of sheep, so James takes Jimmy for the day. He and Richard visit Mr. Dowson, who has a calf that keeps kicking its milk bucket over. I should add that James transports Jimmy in the back of the car in a wicker basket. It was a different time. My parents would remove the back seats from our van for long road trips and we’d lay out blankets. At least Jimmy is contained within a vessel, even if it is made of wicker. James leaves the diaper bag on top of the car and drives off. Ah, well.
Mr. Dowson is convinced that Richard and James can fix his bucket problem, even though they tell him it’s psychological and not medical. Richard finally gives the calf a shot of thiamine (vitamin B1) and says it will definitely fix everything. This is a lie. But it does fix everything! Meaning the calf doesn’t kick the bucket over at least one time. Mr. Dowson is overjoyed. James and Richard drive off in triumph, and it only takes a few minutes of being on the road before James realizes he left the baby at the farm. But Jimmy’s fine! He has a makeshift tea-towel diaper. and James tells Helen what happened. Good job, James! You could have tried to hide that, but you didn’t, and that is great. Helen responds very kindly, and everyone does a splendid job.
Helen has A Day because she realizes her dad and Jenny don’t really need her help with the sheep, and now Jenny is tight with the Women’s Lady Army girl, Doris. When Doris and Helen meet, they immediately have more chemistry than James and Helen ever have. Clearly, the show isn’t going to go in that direction, but Doris is super-putting out 1940s-gay-lady vibes. Then it seems like she’s maybe closer to Jenny’s age. Jenny (who is now wearing a snood) tells Helen she’s thinking of moving to London. She could get a job in a shop. Helen tells her dad that if you chop Jenny in half, it’ll say farmer. Is this an expression in northern England? It’s very evocative. But oddly violent?
At this point, I was very certain that Jenny and Doris were gay for each other, and Jenny had changed her love-of-the-farm ways so she and Doris could be together in London and its denser population of gays. Finally, there would be a gay story line on All Creatures Great and Small, the least gay show on television. When Jenny and Doris decide to ride horses together, I was like, “Ah, here we are, the scene where they discuss how gay they are for each other.” But instead, an airplane spooks Doris’s horse, and James and Richard have to come to check out the horse after it goes lame, and then Doris flirts with Richard. With Richard! What? You all are wasting this opportunity. Jenny and Doris are even in a forest together! A very gay place to be! But fine, I guess we can’t have nice things, i.e., women in snoods kissing each other while herding sheep.
We can, however, have more bonding activities between Mrs. Hall and Siegfried. Mrs. Hall finds a crying dog by the stream and brings Siegfried out to look at it. The dog ingested poison, and despite Siegfried’s efforts, it dies. Then we discover that the dog (Bingo) is Mr. Bosworth’s! Nooo. It was already sad, and then we find out Bingo was Bosworth’s only friend. Bosworth talks to Siegfried about how alike they are, making peace with having a vocation and not a family. Siegfried is discomfited by the idea that he is similar to Bosworth because Bosworth is officious and quarrelsome, two things Siegfried could, of course, never be.
Later, Siegfried queries Mrs. Hall as to this potential similarity. After calling them practically twins (a joke!), she tells Siegfried that he hasn’t given up on life like Bosworth. Also, he has a chosen family. A family that now includes three dogs and a baby that can be in front of the fire while everyone sits in cozy armchairs and then eats pie. This is the future that liberals want. Also, who gets the pie out of the oven? Siegfried! Wearing an apron for some reason, despite not having made the pie. But he’s helping out while Mrs. Hall has to be out and about on her rounds, and that is some A+ work. Siegfried has decided to be more open to change and embrace adaptability. Hurray!
As we leave our beloved family, Mr. Bosworth knocks and yells at them to put that light out. The curtains are open again, and Siegfried incurs a fine of one pound. “Rules are rules. More than my job’s worth, Mr. Farnon.” “You’re a volunteer!” They continue bickering while everyone left at the table toasts to things that never change.
