A young veterinary surgeon begins to practice in the remote Yorkshire Dales in 1937, treating abscesses in horses’ hooves and milk fever in cows and prescribing diets for overfed lap dogs. It hardly sounds like the stuff of bestsellerdom. They also generated two movies and a hit television series that ran from 1978-80, and returned for another four seasons between 1988 and 1990. Still, when Channel 5, in partnership with Masterpiece on PBS, announced a remake of the series in 2019, it didn’t inspire much excitement. But once again, the story demonstrated, as Anatole Broyard put it in his 1972 New York Times review of the novel, “what a satisfying thing ordinary life can be.”

Source: New York Times January 10, 2021 19:06 UTC