Land Girls

Well, despite what has been written I thought this was a smashing little series, or three. It is a bit 'soapy' but I don't like soaps yet I like this. It does lean on sentimentality, but in my opinion not too much. More than anything it's a character study, where few characters are either all good or all bad. Mark Benton provides the comic relief and it's something he expertise's in. It does stand as a drama though, the trials and tribulations of a set of decent women in an harrowing time. I've just watched it daily on bbc, and have felt cheer for the characters at a personal time where I need something to believe in. The acting is excellent, the story lines strong. It can be disappointing when characters or actors drop out between series'. But I presume that's a testament in itself. As with all wartime dramas (as opposed to war dramas) it shows the best of British resolve. All I know is, when good things happen to the main characters I feel glad, and when bad things happen I feel sad. And if a drama manages that, it's more than halfway home.

I am a huge fan of British drama, especially WWII homefront stuff, which Land Girls is. I stuck it out only because of this and the lovely English village and countryside locations. It reminded me of series like Heartbeat, which have some heart-stirring bits mixed in with the silliness. Here, Mark Benton plays the Mr. Greenglass part of the "comic relief", only it's not so comic and nowhere near relief.

What kept coming to mind while I watched this whole series was "stupid people making stupid decisions and doing stupid things". If someone could mess up or make the wrong choice or do the dumbest thing possible, they would. Sometimes to "advance" the plot but sometimes just because they were annoyingly dumb. Some stuff was just ridiculous for the sake of being ridiculous. Or maybe the show runners thought it was funny, but it could only be interpreted as humorous if you like very juvenile, slapstick silliness. And I realise that some people do.

I'm not going to get specific to illustrate my point because 1. spoiler alert would be necessary, and 2. I just can't even remember much of what I found so objectionable because it's just not important to me.

What I DO recall is how annoyingly stupid so much of it was. And I'm not basing that on 20 minutes into the first episode and then giving up in disgust. I actually watched the entire 15 episodes and it was all cut from the same silly cloth.

Scenery was wonderful; acting was generally convincing; scripts generally dreadful.

Riddled with clichés, this daytime drama about the land girls (women conscripted to work on the land during World War II) is in five parts and boasts a competent cast in a sanitised script - a very PC and simplistic view of a country under siege.

We first meet the four new land girls at the start of the first episode - snooty Nancy (Summer Strallen) who wears high heels and expects a soldier to carry her luggage from the station, sisters Annie (Christine Bottomley) and Bea (Jo Woodcock) - one bitter, one naive, and salt of the earth Joyce (Becci Gemmell) whose family were wiped out in the Coventry bombings. We also meet Esther (Susan Cookson), who keeps the girls in order, black-marketeer and farmer Finch (Mark Benton), and the Lord and Lady of the House (Nathaniel Parker and Sophie Ward).

There's also a Home Guard Sergeant, Tucker (Danny Webb) who likes the feeling of being in charge, and in town there's a group of GIs.

From here it is very much ticking the boxes - there's an illicit affair, a soldier going AWOL, suspected collaborators, a marriage based on hate, and a bit of political correctness about black GIs and segregation. It's watchable enough but somehow I was expecting a bit more.

Although it looks great and as if a bit of money has been thrown at it, Land Girls is historically shaky and very much has the air of 'we've seen all this before'. A bit of a missed opportunity.

I tried, I wanted to live this but the script is just awful. I don't know if the "Yanks" are really American but the accents are horrible. The real Land Girls deserve a lot better than this.

I've watched Land Girls to the bitter end, and feel several IQ points less intelligent now. Really, as other reviewers have said, the series is rife with historical inaccuracies. But as one BBC spokesman said, period pieces don't have to be accurate. Really?

Most annoying to me, though, were the episodes in which Martin, the young boy, gets hit in the face by a barn door. He gets up and walks home, with a bit of a headache. But later, he mentions that he "can't see" a page of writing, although somehow he has no problem getting about.

Some days, or weeks? later, he goes to the doctor and finds out he has "detached retinas" (although he can still see), which means he'll go blind without an operation.

Apparently no one did a blind bit of research on this: In order to have both retinas detach, you'd have to be hit extremely hard on the back of the head, and would have not been trotting around soon after. Also, if your retinas are detached, you simply would not be able to see, and after waiting for weeks for the "operation" it's unlikely that there would still be any viable tissue left. 20 years after this period piece, retinal surgery was still in its infancy, with low rates of success.

Of course the "operation" was a plot device that had consequences that took the series through several episodes.

But really, is it that difficult for script writers to do a bit of research? I think they must count on people being so ignorant about history and other facts that they don't notice glaring errors. Perhaps they think we all have retinal detachments.