Buckle in: We’ve got a sad episode. Not “We have to kill Clive, the Best Bull That Ever Lived†sad, but still sad. Not going to lie, I almost dinged it a star in my rating because it’s January, and we’re almost at our second pandemic anniversary, and unnecessarily sad things in fiction should pay the price. But then I said to myself, “Self, there is perhaps a lesson to be gleaned from this.†A lesson about maintaining hope and soldiering on, etc. Also, it’s still a great show.
We begin with a funeral. Farmer Billy Dalby is dead and has left behind a wife, two children, and a farm. To make things worse for the Dalbys, their entire herd of cows has husk, more technically known as parasitic bronchitis, which puts all the cows at risk. This disease and its potential consequences for the Dalbys will consume James for most of the episode because he is a very nice young man.
The B plot is Tristan taking care of some chickens. We need this fun other storyline because of all the sadness with the cows. As Siegfried has bafflingly decided to keep lying about Tristan having passed his veterinary exams, James and Tristan are confused about why Tristan can’t do more at the practice. Not that Tristan necessarily wants to do more, because he would like to be paid just to lie around and listen to cricket matches on the radio (relatable, minus the cricket part). As it is, he is getting paid nothing, and Siegfried is constantly hovering over him. Because of the lying.
After Mrs. Hall scolds Siegfried about this (Mrs. Hall, who is complicit in the lying!) and he petulantly wobbles the chicken-shaped salt-and-pepper shakers back and forth, these selfsame shakers give him an idea. No, it’s not the great idea to tell Tristan the truth, but rather to entrust him with the rearing of chickens. Tristan has to build a nest box for them, which he promptly outsources to James because James is a sucker. As a side note, I watched a YouTube video on how to build these and it looks hard, but also I am scared of power tools, so maybe a child with an electric drill could do it (do not give children drills).
HOW did I almost forget that TRICKI WOO is back? Remember Tricki Woo, the Pekingese with the very fluffed-out coat? Owned by Mrs. Pumphrey, who was previously played by the late Diana Rigg but is now recast? (Sob.) Mrs. Pumphrey’s butler drops him off at the veterinary practice. He is delivered on a red satin pillow with gold tassels, along with his chaise longue and three pieces of wicker luggage. You can later see his chaise right by the fire it’s so cute I cannot. Ugh, I love that dog.
The chickens and Tricki collide as Siegfried and Tristan bicker about how to get chickens to lay eggs. Tricki follows Siegfried into the coop and promptly gets pecked up by the chickens, who probably think he is a large squashed mushroom. In his haste to render medical aid to Tricki’s pecked leg, Siegfried leaves the door open and all the chickens escape, as chickens do. In college, I read The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald (creator of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle). It’s the story of when she and her husband ran a chicken farm, and the only thing I retain from that book is how much running a chicken farm made her absolutely despise chickens, a hatred that she describes in intense detail.
None of Tristan’s runaway chickens die, though! He tricks Siegfried by buying eggs in town and placing them under the chickens. Siegfried decides Tristan did a good enough job to begin to receive a paycheck. But Tristan, fundamentally good egg that he is (puns!), confesses to his ovoid deception. Siegfried then confesses to his deception. Not the one you want him to confess to, about Tristan’s exams! Just the one about not admitting he was the one to leave the door open and release the chickens into the unsuspecting world.
But what about those cows? Husk is caused by parasites, which live in the grass the cows eat, so first James says to bring the cows inside and feed them hay and high protein cake. Once again, this woman’s husband just died, she and her children have to run a farm by themselves, her livestock is maybe all dying, and she has to bake cakes for cows. It’s just all very 2020 vibes, which, again, I did not appreciate in my pastoral fantasyland of escapism, but these things happen. Apparently entirely and only to the widowed Mrs. Dalby.
James is so upset about all of this that he eats breakfast in a robe without having brylcreemed his hair. He has floppy hair! He looks like a Romantic poet! It’s a fun look that can solely be brought about by cow angst. Siegfried suggests a throat injection that James scoffs at as an old farmers’ tale, but he decides to try it anyway. This throat injection, by the way, is a mixture of chloroform, turpentine, and creosote.
The IRL James Harriot thought this injection was pretty awful, and it seems that he was right about that. Farmers thought the chloroform knocked out the parasites (parasite knock-out gas), the turpentine then killed them (why the chloroform then?), and creosote, which is an oil distilled from coal tar, would cause the cows to cough them out. This sounds like something I would come up with, which is not a good thing. But sometimes you do things because that’s how they’re done, and so James does it. A cow dies, and it’s pretty terrible. Mrs. Dalby starts crying and asks James what if her best isn’t good enough, at which point my notes say, “this is too close to home, zero stars.â€
Now, some of you are probably saying, “Hey. Wasn’t there a whole other plotline where James asks Helen out on a date, and they have a problem because he doesn’t understand how much people are tied to their farms?†And YES. There is that plotline! James takes her to a fancy place called the Renniston, and they both look very uncomfortable when he says he just wants Mrs. Dalby to sell the farm so she has an easier time, and Helen says James leaving Glasgow isn’t the same as leaving a farm. This may, in fact, be true, but I don’t know. I can see feeling more closely tied to land because you’ve had to subsist off what you grow from it. But comparing feelings about home feels like a zero-sum game.
So now James and Helen have fought, the cows are still sick, and James is half-convinced he should go back to Glasgow. He goes back to the Dalbys, where another cow has died. He tells Mrs. Dalby that they’ve tried everything and she could still lose the entire herd, but all she hears is that there’s a chance she might not. Which is frankly amazing. She says she understands the risk, but if there’s the slightest chance, she will try to save the farm. I’m going to try to recall this sort of backbone when I’m lying in my bed, staring blankly at the ceiling and listening to “We Don’t Talk About Bruno†for the hundredth time because I read a recent news headline.
We don’t find out here what happens with the cows! The new Mrs. Pumphrey, played by Patricia Hodge, picks up Tricki Woo and tells Siegfried that Tricki goes “completely cracker dog†when he sees a chicken and that this is his fifth peck this year. She calls this behavior Trickiwoolally.
James apologizes to Helen, and they kiss on a roof. It is fine.
Items for Pondering
• James with Brylcreem or James without Brylcreem?
• Should we all get chicken-shaped salt-and-pepper shakers?
• Is there a cuter sight than a tiny pet sitting on a chaise longue by the fire? If so, I would like to see it.