It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet

A sequel to the fresh-faced, scrubbed and earnest All Creatures Great and Small, based on James Herriot's bestselling tales of the life of a Yorkshire vet in the '30s. What Richard Gordon's Doctor books were to the '50s, Herriot's vet books are to the '70s. Certainly both have won their way into the hearts of the middle classes, presumably because both are so reassuring about the order of things (an impending world war is kept discreetly in the background of this instalment). And in both, our medical hero mixes self-deprecation with an ability to pull it off when it really counts. Alderton plays the part originated by Simon Ward with a greater natural ability; but otherwise the film offers the same round of people chasing animals and vice versa, farmyard gags, and nostalgia for a vanished rural lifestyle.