This Farming Life

 This Farming Life, which we began watching while we were looking for a light-hearted program to end our evening and calm down after streaming a mystery or a thriller, has turned into a go-to program filled with compelling characters, beautiful Scottish scenery, while singing a love song to rural living in a farm setting. Produced by the BBC Documentary Unit, which creates around 2000 hours of video material a year for national and international consumption, by thoughtfully assembling what emerges, in effect, as a lush visual love song to farming, family, and rural living. 

In Season 1 of This Farming Life, five families living in five quite contrasting regions of northern Scotland face the vicissitudes and victories, challenges and successes of life largely governed by the animals they love, the countryside they treasure, and the extremes of weather and climate they endure.  

Sandy Granville and his wife Ali are retired London lawyers who moved to The Isle of Lewis, an island several hours ferry ride removed from the mainland, where Sandy became a crofter, a herder of a flock living year-round outdoors in extremely rough country. The herd of sheep is annually put on boats to bring to his farmstead, where they shear sheep, thin the herd, and care for it.

Sandy Granville

Martin Irvine and his, now, wife Mel farm Limousin beef cattle on a farm near Drummuir on a rented estate where they also care for 600 ewes for the Lord of the manor. Their relationship develops through the year, culminating in a rousing wedding in the eleventh episode. Their campaign to sell cattle at local and regional fairs culminates in Scotland’s largest agricultural fair near the end of the first series.

Martin & Mel Irvine

Bobby and Anne Lennox’s Shantron Farm lies near Luss on Loch Lomond north of Glasgow. They are well known for their work with regional youth groups, especially young farmers. Also important in their enterprise is a bed and breakfast business associated with the farm. They and their ancestors have been farming the same land since the 1750’s.

Anne & Bobby Lennox

John and Fiona Scott’s family have farmed Fearn Farm for four generations on over 1100 acres they own plus over 650 additional acres they lease. On it, they raise sheep and cattle. John was named “Sheep Farmer of the Year” for 2015 in Scotland.

John Scott

During the first season, the ten episodes follow the families through the seasons, beginning with bringing their herds back to the barns for the winter and then following the seasons of the year along with the seasons of life, relationships, and the work itself. The series never condescends to the characters while accurately portraying the difficulty, danger, and rewards of the work. While their backgrounds are quite different, these are people committed to their work, their animals, and their relationships.

This Farming Life never shies away from aspects of farm life which could provide difficulties for some viewers. The cattle and sheep on these farms are useful for, basically, two things - meat and breeding. Sex and death are constant companions of daily life. This reality is never ignored or disguised, providing language and material which might never be heard or seen on American television screens. 

I highly recommend This Farming Life as entertainment and for education. Furthermore, the filming is absolutely beautiful. Scotland’s lakes, mountains, fields, and landscape help define the beauty of the region and lifestyle as well as the commitment to treasure it. Don’t miss this series running on BritBox. Currently there are four seasons available in the U.S. with more to come.

The Inspector Lynley Mysteries - BritBox

 

Inspector Lynley Mysteries, based on the still emerging series of novels by Elizabeth George, the most recent one having been published in 2019, revolves around Inspector Lynley himself and his partner, DS Barbara Havers as they are assigned to the wide variety of locations, often beyond their Scotland Yard base, creating some tension with local police forces. Other points of conflict are often based on race, class, gender, education, and wealth, leading to an almost endless variety of possible stories. 

Nathaniel Parker as Lynley

Lynley, the eighth Earl of Asherton (played by the classically trained Nathaniel Parker), comes from a conflicted family of inherited wealth and position complicated by the effects of years of privilege. As “Tommy” Lynley, he has left his heritage behind for the challenge of becoming a police inspector, with whom many officers don’t seem to wish to work. In the first episode, he is joined by Detective Sergeant (DS) Barbara Havers (Sharon Small), a product of the working class who has risen  to her rank despite having a habit of irritating her superiors, mostly because of her quick insight and wit, as well as her awareness of her own worth as person. Such diversity creates a rich partnership within a fraught relationship, exactly the stuff creating lots of interesting dramatic opportunities. Their chemistry permits the duo to see situations from two viewpoints, often leading to greater insight into the crimes as trust between them grows and matures. 

Sharon Small

A Suitable Vengeance, episode 2.3, provides a portrait of Lynley’s background as he returns home with profiler Helen for their engagement party. As the story has progressed through a series of cases, Tommy’s background always moves between background (his origin story) and foreground (the cases) interspersed with his character. All this comes clearer in this single episode. However, he and (to a lesser extent) Havers emerge as the series continues. The growth of characters through the course of many dramatic series provides nuance, development, and familiarity with the characters, making them ever more irresistible. 

Lynsley's Family Estate

Lynley, himself, seems conflicted between his desire to shuck his aristocratic background of wealth and privilege, while simultaneously relying upon it. He’s frequently attracted to beautiful, but equally flawed, female characters who end up disappointing him (or dying). He cannot see or acknowledge the growing attraction and admiration he feels for Havers, whose humble background and lesser rank in the police force keeps him from seeing her qualities in full. This relationship forms the core of the series around which the crimes and their solutions are wound. The chemistry between the two central characters creates the tension driving viewers to return to this addictive series. 

English detective film is as much concerned with social class as American video deals with race, although both are available in generous helpings. I like the way different regions are portrayed in various parts of Great Britain as we watch these shows. Regional accents, a variety of historical settings, and always emerging characters and situations seem to provide an endless number of series now being introduced to new audiences. Suffice it to say there’s variety enough for all tastes. 

Since the Inspector Lynley Mysteries are based on a series of novels, I downloaded Elizabeth George’s For the Sake of Elena, a 464 page novel, the fifth of eighteen Lynley novels, from our local library’s digital lending collection.   I deliberately chose a sample we had already viewed in order to satisfy my curiosity. The first ten episodes of Lynley Mysteries were based on this crime series. Later shows used the George characters in films written specifically for television broadcast, not based on specific novels, but were based on original shows written for television.

 While I’m giving the source material for the Inspector Lynley Mysteries a read, the television films in no way rely on a viewer’s doing so. In fact, it might detract from your enjoying this very good television production. The television stories are excellent, and, as usual, I recommend watching the series in chronological order better to enjoy the writing quality and the imagination going into developing the program. You’ll find your time well spent.

Bosch on Amazon Prime - Series Review

Titus Welliver has long been a valuable and recognizable TV actor playing a variety of roles in commercial television. Now he's got the title role in the best police procedural I've ever seen on television. He's played featured roles in needle-moving television programs back to programs like Brooklyn South and NYPD Blue in the 1990's to That's Life early in century, the epic western Deadwood, and now forty episodes of the Amazon original Bosch, dating back to 2014. He's a distinguished and highly recognized actor who finally has a gripping, exciting television role worthy of his skills.

Titus Welliver

In the pilot episode of Bosch, we meet the title character, Detective Harry Bosch, as he and his partner Jerry Edgar, ably played by Jamie Hector, chase down a suspected child molester, separating to corner the fugitive, who Bosch confronts in an alley, shooting him when he appears to go for his gun. Bosch is brought to trial, obviously as much a victim of professional jealousy as he is a policeman who will ignore approved procedure as well as his own safety to achieve justice. In one taught five or six minute chase scene, Harry Bosch is revealed for his complexity and independence. This sort of revealing character study is rarely seen in today's commercial television, nor does it ever happen without commercial interruption.

We're now well into the third season of Bosch with its twists and turns as the underlying story continues in all the complexity and with all the nuance allowed by streaming series television. Bosch is a thorough, dedicated, smart, and tortured hero, who elicits both admiration, suspicion, and jealousy from his fellow police, as well as generating too much press for the politicians. The characters are well drawn, almost never cardboard cutouts, but real, complex human beings.

The locations drip with authenticity - the squad room, streets, bars, heat, and diversity of Los Angeles provide scenes of gripping tension as well as shedding bright sunlight, on the City itself as it comes to life. Meanwhile, the the series highlights political process within the police department itself, as well as the city as a whole.

In many ways, Bosch can stand, along with so many other distinguished streaming programs, as a new paradigm for how to make and how to watch television. Not constrained from having to shoehorn forty-four minutes of content into each hour of commercial television while breaking continuity into little bits, streaming allows stories to continue through ten episodes and link from season to season. Instead of a bungled short story, viewers can now consume an entire video novel at their own pace. 

Bosch currently has four seasons available on Amazon Prime Video with season five in production and a green light for season six. Perhaps the biggest problem with video streaming seems to be completing an entire season's shows, often ten episodes, in a binge of over a period of several days. The viewer doesn't have to wait until next week's show is released. In the end, however, we must wait several months, or even years, for the next season to be posted. However, the offerings of series and movies are so rich as to be difficult to resist. Streaming television has significantly changed our viewing habits.

Here's the official trailer for season one of Bosch. It's on Amazon Prime: