Los Larkin

I don't really understand the motivation behind this (extremely loose) adaptation of HE Bates' novels.

A lot of reviewers have commented on the anachronistic racial diversity. It is anachronistic but that doesn't particularly bother me, the problem is more that the script sounds "written by white people" and is very heavy-handed with how it manages that aspect.

What does bother me is jamming 2020s morals and mores into a 1950s setting. The original series and books are very much laid back, laissez-faire, rural romping and hedonism. Amoral, perhaps.

This new series is full of contemporary angst and grating moralising. Ma sounding like a modern-day parenting manual. Lectures on classism. Mariette endlessly wanting to widen her horizons, which cheapens the whole "rural idyll" that the Larkins' village represents.

Then weird plot changes. Why is Oscar no longer their baby? The Larkin children getting it into their heads that Pa is committing adultery. The silly Charley/Tom rivalry.

It's not unenjoyable, but a lot of it just feels pointless, and it lacks the innocent pleasure of the books and the earlier series.

I would urge anyone watching this to give the earlier series a go if you haven't seen it, as well as read the books. There's so much more to love there.

I know it seems racist to say this and I don't want to be that way but as others have said this would not have been a multi-cultural society at that time. For some of us and what we know about the Darling buds of May etc adding characters of non-Caucasian ethnicity is just more tokenism and sometimes we could live without it. Not that it doesn't have its place it's just lets make it appropriate. Anything else is patronising.

I noted that a certain TV station were running 'The Darling Buds of May' concurrently with 'The Larkins' and I was excited to see a remake. However, the acting is certainly very wooden and the timeline is inaccurate in keeping with the basic facts of H. E Bates' written works. Although good to see a multi-cultural cast, I am not sure if this truly reflective of 1950's Kent. Another distasteful addition is the use of modern slang so I don't know what the writers were hoping to achieve but it. Somewhat tarnishes the innocence and floaty feeling in the aforementioned TV series. The only character that resembles Pam Ferris is the new Ma Larkin (given that Pam Ferris was very well chosen going by the books), but all other characters are really quite forgettable. A big disappointment.

I'm biased in that I really liked the original and rewatched it two or three years ago and fell in love with it all over again. Viewers who watched that classic version aren't going to warm to the remake as it doesn't add anything to it aside from some modern sensibilities in terms of tone and casting diversity.

For those that didn't see the 90's The Darling Buds of May this is a half-decent family comedy in the same vein as the Durells which the writer Simon Nye also adapted and the Indian Doctor with Sanjeev Bhaskar, but probably not as successful as either of those shows.

I like Bradley Walsh and thought he was great in Dr. Who, but he doesn't have the comic talents of David Jason who made the original so enjoyable. This is more of an ensemble piece and sadly falls a bit flat, the humour is lacking and so is the cheeky spark between Ma and Pa Larkin. 5/10.

Sadly another remake of a great series that has fallen foul of the equality brigade.

As someone who grew up in rural south-east England in the 50s I can assure you that it was unlikely you would never have seen one black person - let alone so many as apparently the producers of this series seem to think there were.

Why does everyone seem to be trying to rewrite history?