To England...

As I sit here with fond memories of my time spent in England, ever so short, I just wanted to say thank you for sharing Alf Wight with the world.  His books and later TV series have given my DW and I many happy hours together as we laughed and loved his characters portrayed so well.  We own the entire collection of the series and view it every 3 or 4 years. 

Cuthbert, when were you in England?

I do not know of Alf Wright, perhaps  because I left England in 1979 so perhaps he was after my time.

With regard to England I am in a time warp as I still enjoy the repeats of British TV shows that I watch when I lived there, such as Heartbeat, etc.

Alf Wight wrote the books All Creatures Great and Small under the pen name of James Herriot.  I read a couple of the books and have the entire TV series on DVD.  I believe Alf Wight died in 1995.  He was born in 1916. 

I attended Jesus College, Oxford University in the summer of 1967.  My wife and I spent 6 days in and around the Bristol area in 2009.  Most of the time we were at the Avon Gorge Hotel.

Of course I remember All Creatures Great and Small.  One of my favourite programmes.  I wonder why it has never been broadcast in Canada.  I would say it is on a par with Heartbeat, same area and time.  The time that I lived in England and I think is being lost in that land.

I love the Yorkshire Dales and moors, and also the Lake District, even though I was brought up in the Home Counties.  For those interested, the Home Counties were Surrey, Kent,  and other counties adjacent to London. I must look it up to what counties were included.  I think the Shires may be a different category. I lived in Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire before I came to Canada.

The Home Counties in England  consist of Surrey, West and East Sussex, Kent and Essex, and some of the Shires, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Berkshire. Also included Middlesex but that go subsumed in Greater London.

The rest of the Shires kind of form an outer ring and go up north as far as Yorkshire and Lancashire, west of England etc.

So I lived in the Home Counties all my life until I came to Canada.

And I am from Staffordshire in the West Midlands. Moved to Canada with my parents in 1957. My wife (French Canadian) and I love the English programs such as Heartbeat which we have watched for years on TVO (TV Ontario) on Friday nights. We used to watch All Creatures Great and Small but I'm not sure if it was on a Canadian station or perhaps Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the USA. We also watch Brit shows such as Downton Abbey and Mr. Selfridge on PBS. Another favourite was Doc Martin.

Never been to England but my wife loves British mysteries. Netflix has a big variety of them.
Inspector Lewis, Morse, Midsomer murders, Doc Martin and others.
Craig

TC, has you wife visited England  or has any English ancestry?  

I was born and bred in England and the era depicted in most of those programmes was when I was growing up to maturity so naturally I identify with them and I lived over half my life there and when I came to Canada I felt right at home.

No she has never been out of the country, just likes that kind of show.
 She has a Irish lineage by way of NY city.

Kelejan wrote:Of course I remember All Creatures Great and Small.  One of my favourite programmes.  I wonder why it has never been broadcast in Canada.  I would say it is on a par with Heartbeat, same area and time. 

I was able to view about 10 minutes of Season 1 Episode 1 of Heartbeat and can't wait to see them all.  If I can find it, I will order a DVD box set.

Another English show that we have enjoyed in the past is "Last of the Summer Wine" which was set in West Yorkshire and was the longest running comedy show in Britain.

trolleydriver wrote:Another English show that we have enjoyed in the past is "Last of the Summer Wine" which was set in West Yorkshire and was the longest running comedy show in Britain.

That and Heartbeat are my two favourite English shows; I have watched both of them time and time again and always find something that I have not noticed before.  What I like about Last of the Summer Wine is its gentle humour and short one-liners that always make me laugh or smile.

I am an avid viewer of quality British TV series and these would be Heartbeat, All Creatures Great and Small, McBeth, Foyle's War, Inspector George Gently and on it goes.  

Cheers.

Born there... my dad was stationed there in the US Air Force.  Monty Python.

That is all.

I've enjoyed an episode or two of Foyle's War, and still love Fawlty Towers 30 years after I first saw it. It is my all-time favorite sitcom. Those shows were brilliant. Big Monty Python fan too; my friends and I used to quote so many of their lines to each other all the time. And does anyone remember Michael Palin's short effort of long ago, Ripping Yarns? Some of those were hilarious. I have to watch his travel shows someday. Have read snatches of his journals/biographies and they were really good.

Only saw a little of All Creatures Great and Small, but read the first four books. On TV, I like Vera a lot, though it is SO grim. I like that the episodes are really about life, just using the detective format as a vehicle. Also like another grim one, Endeavor, about Inspector Morse's younger years ... but I've never seen Inspector Morse.

Also a fan of Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes. I thought he was truly great as Holmes, and some of the episodes were extraordinarily well-made, with brilliant little touches.

Wanted to try Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere show, but it went off Amazon Prime before I got past the first episode.

There's another one I've seen only a few episodes of, a police procedural, begins with a couple of letters that may designate the station number or something. Really good actors and plots. But it's hard to catch here.

And, if you can believe it, I get almost sentimental about David Attenborough's nature shows. They're just so darn good I feel privileged to watch them while hearing his thoughtful narration.

I'm a fan of many things British. BBC is the news I read the most. I can see the slant in it, but it helps undo the slant I see in American news.

CitizenKate wrote:Born there... my dad was stationed there in the US Air Force.  Monty Python.

That is all.

Where was your dad stationed? We have lived near US stations and we have had friends there.

We were in Gainsborough during the 50's.  Our closest neighbors were the Doringtons.  I'll have to ask my older brothers the names of others we knew there.

CitizenKate wrote:We were in Gainsborough during the 50's.  Our closest neighbors were the Doringtons.  I'll have to ask my older brothers the names of others we knew there.

My husband was once a "Work Study Engineer" and worked for an agency that did project around the country.  We spent about a year in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, and while he worked on his project I worked at Cottam Electricity Generation Station in their office. We had a small apartment there and at weekends we went home to our house near Bedford. That must have been in the late 1960s.

I was posted to RAF Croughton in Northhamptonshire from 1999 to 2002.  Loved the Cotswolds and Bath was my favorite city to visit.    Made a concentrated effort to get to Scotland and Wales while there, and drove to Dublin, Ireland several times to visit my sister-in-law and family.  Would go back in a heartbeat if I wasn't retired.

Time Team was a favorite TV show for me and Alan Titchmarsh in Gardener's World. 


Kay

Kay, I regret to say that although I have some Irish blood in me from my great-great-grandfather, I have never been to Ireland and now I live in Canada, I doubt that I will be able to go. GGGF was in Sligo and emigrated to England, probably Liverpool.

Nearest I got to Ireland was the Isle of Man for the TT RAces.  No, I did not race in it, but I was in an exhibition parade of Veteran and Vintage Motorcycles when I rode my 1922 Velocette and my husband rode his 1914 New Imperial.

Kelejan, thanks for sharing your story.