Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Larkins’ On Acorn TV, A Retro Family Dramedy That’s British Comfort TV

People are excited about the return of The Waltons this year, despite the fact that the original series debuted almost 50 years ago. Why? Because that gentle kind of family drama — or dramedy — just doesn’t exist on TV anymore. But before The Waltons arrived on TV, there was The Larkins, a family from the British countryside that weathered good and bad times together. A new version of the series, based on a novel series by H.E. Bates, has arrived on Acorn TV.

THE LARKINS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A man in a vintage truck drives through the English countryside, the tailfin of an airplane tied to his truck bed and roof. He’s whistling as he drives.

The Gist: Sydney “Pop” Larkin (Bradley Walsh) is a gentleman farmer and junk dealer in the rural county of Kent; the year is 1958. The tailfin he’s driving home will complete the plane he’s been restoring for some time. Pop and his wife, Ma Larkin (Joanna Scanlan) have a big brood, and the four youngest of the six want to go into town; he lets his 11-year-old son Montgomery (Liam Middleton) drive the truck into Littlechurch.

When town bon vivant Alec Norman (Tony Gardner) complains that the truck is blocking his sports car, Montgomery backs into it when he attempts to move the truck. The snotty Alec smacks the kid in the head, much to the anger of Pop. Pop finds out later from neighbor and family friend Brigadier (Kriss Dosanjh) that the town is looking to appoint Alec to the ceremonial position of Master of Hounds. When Ma hears from Alec’s wife that he’s the right “caliber of person” for the role, Ma decides that Pop should be up for the role, too.

In the meantime, Ma and Pop have to deal with the news that their oldest child, Mariette (Sabrina Bartlett), wants to go off to France to study, feeling the need to be on her own for awhile. Her parents think it’s because she can’t find a boy she wants to settle down with in town. She may stay a little longer, though, now that she’s encountered the handsome Tom Fisher (Stephen Hagan), who’s new in town. She also helps her younger sister Primrose (Lydia Page), whose heart is broken by a carnival worker that romanced her when the carnival was in town.

Pop helps a neighbor, a widow named Edith Pilchester (Amelia Bullmore), when a speculator comes by and convinces her to sell him her home. She really didn’t want to sell, so Pop lets her sign the form, then tells the new owner that he owns the surrounding land, and won’t allow him access “except by helicopter”.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Larkins could be interpreted as an American version of The Waltons, but there was actually a TV adaptation of H.E. Bates’ The Darling Buds of May in 1958, 13 years before The Waltons debuted.

Our Take: What Simon Nye and Abigail Wilson have accomplished in adapting the Bates novel for this iteration of The Larkins is actually quite refreshing for this era of television. They’ve managed to keep the show a good-natured, gentle story with continuing stories sandwiched around episodic plots. And those episodic plots are more vignettes, given the fact that there are often two or three of those plots per episode.

It doesn’t matter if the plot is as insignificant as who is Master of Hounds or something like Mariette leaving for France; the plots all involve how together the Larkins are as a family and how they weather the ups and downs, the big deals and small deals, together. It’s quite remarkable how well that sentiment plays, even in 2021-22.

What helps are the game performances, especially from Walsh, Scanlan and Bartlett. You can almost see the joy in their eyes as they embody these somewhat fantastical characters. At a certain point, we may see them go through more troubling times, but the way they embody their characters makes us think that they’ll keep their chins up as they face those troubles. They do root them in reality at the same time, which makes the characters plausible even if they do seem at times to be too good to be true.

As the season goes along and we get to know the Larkins and the townspeople that they interact with, the world that Bates created and Nye and Wilson adapted should gel a bit more. At a certain point, dropping in on The Larkins will be like visiting old friends. And there’s something comforting in a show like that in this day and age.

Sex and Skin: None; the show is pretty family friendly.

Parting Shot: The family is met at their house by Cedric Charlton (Tok Stephen), a tax collector. It seems that the family have never paid taxes… ever. Pop cheerily invites him in for tea. As he humphers, he sees Mariette and is taken with her.

Sleeper Star: Bartlett is radiant as Mariette, whom we bet stays with her parents for much longer than just the summer.

Most Pilot-y Line: When the Brigadier asks why the family eats goose with ketchup, Pop says “It perks it up a bit.” Um, yuck?

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Larkins is a good-natured bit of British comfort TV that is a great antidote to the heaviness of most current dramas.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream The Larkins On Acorn TV