When I was little, my parents would usually let me stay up late on saturdays to watch tv with them. I treasured these evenings greatly, whether our usual saturday night channel NRK was airing Alló alló, Peak Practice, Fawlty Towers or Heartbeat. But the series that I was most fond of was The Darling Buds of May, or “Life with the Larkins” as it is called over here.
So I was pleasantly surprised the other day when a relative had purchased three seasons of the series on dvd and told me I could borrow them. Since I started watching the first episode about a week ago I’ve been in a sort of trance… Oh my gosh, what a ridiculously happy family these Larkins are! The whole series is mainly sunshine, beautiful scenery shots from Kent (the garden of England) happy farm animals, children playing, babies laughing…well, you get the picture. The whole thing is on the limit to overdone, but it’s not! That’s what’s so wonderful about it!
The Larkins
If you have the opprtunity I’d strongly reccommend joining the Larkins at Home Farm and enjoying their company for the 15 hours of runtime that the dvd-set offers. Among the wonderful characters you’ll meet are Pop Sid Larkin,played by David Jason, also known as detective Jack Frost, and Ma Flo Parker, played by Pam Ferris. She later went on to play the evil Ms. Truchbull in the film based on Roald Dahl’s Matilda, a character that is the complete opposite of the loving Ma in this series. You’ll also meet Ma and Pop’s children, the oldest being Mariette, portrayed by a young Catherine Zeta Jones.
