Land Girls

The series is well acted. The complaint here about "cliches" is itself one. Look up the history and look it up from first-person, eye-witness research. The events are based on real-life experiences and the protagonists being women should not frighten away legitimate historians who understand the time period and the sacrifices British women had to endure. The shape of the events are far closer to real history than some of the bleating-heart (not a typo) critics imagine. Yes, it is a soap opera. That was a given, by the way, to anyone who started watching it. But the position of women in Britain during the war and the dynamics that could and did occur are a part of history that also shapes the future for that society. For that focus, alone the series deserves respect. If the negative critics of this series are Americans, they can be forgiven for their ignorance. If the critics are British, they can only be apologists for the behavior of officials who had totally lost their moral bearings.

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.

This series is repeating on The BBC. Whilst watchable it is ultimately a bit silly with very little farming to be seen. Ultimately if their efforts were replicated throughout the nation everyone would have starved

Liked the series but they left you hanging without wrapping things up with several stories. One character came back as a different person (the first one was better looking). There isn't going to be a 4th series and again left dangling. Changed the girls too many times. Could have been a lot better, loved the time period, the actors were great, gave insight into a unsung group of women who sacrificed and served during the war. I liked that. Overall enjoyed the series, disappointed that it didn't continue and maybe bring back some stories they left unfinished to wrap them up.

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.