Sunset Song

I can't believe I am the first person to review this brilliant TV series. I would have been too young to watch it in 1971, but the BBC have recently been showing old classic TV series on BBC4. I have rewatched Our friends in the north, How green was my valley, The singing detective and The roads to freedom. Sunset Song is just as good.

It tells the story of Chris Guthrie, her family and the local farming community in NE Scotland. I had to watch with subtitles as the Scottish dialect is difficult to follow, but it does make the drama more real. Vivien Heilbron is perfect as Chris as is Andrew Keir as her difficult father, but all the acting was first class as was the direction and pacing.

It will be available on BBC iplayer for several months.

I gave this 10 stars. Like the previous reviewer I watched the 2025 rerun as I would have been too young at the time. Excellent programme with a few flaws in casting. Not enough Aberdeen/Aberdeenshire/Mearns actors to choose from, so a few Glaswegians were in prominent roles with varying success depending on how well they could manage the accents. Roddy McMillan is succesful; his Para Handy in the Vital Spark was also convincing. Alec McAvoy is middling (he played Glaswegian Sunny Jim in the Vital Spark); he at least tries. Whilst John Grieve interprets his character of a small Mearns farmer as a miserable Glaswegian stoker with pretensions to be an engineer (his role in the Vital Spark), but then that was the character he always played. English actor Anthony Valentine played a couple of scenes as a Scottish Minister with one being a key speech and is very convincing.