Mark Cunliffe 🇵🇸’s review published on Letterboxd:
The original adaptation of James Herriot's vet novels is a cosy and enjoyable enough afternoon watch but has an occasionally darker, more straight hue than the later TV series.
Simon Ward is very solid in the lead role as Herriot and very convincing too, though the character is essentially the kind of idealistic, likeable youth he'd cornered the market in playing at that time. Brian Stirner as Tristan Farnon lacks the innocuous charm that Peter Davison would later bring to the role on television and as such makes little impact. It's perhaps a young Anthony Hopkins who impresses the most as the senior in the practice, Siegfried Farnon. Though the rightly bluff martinet nature of the character on display in the script here lacks some of the more contrary eccentric core that he also had in the books and in Robert Hardy's subsequent portrayal. New Zealander Lisa Harrow makes for a striking Helen, Herriot's love interest and is on a par with TV's Carol Drinkwater - both of whom were far better than Lynda Bellingham. The rest of the cast is populated by capable characters actors like Freddie Jones, TP McKenna, Brenda Bruce and Jenny Runacre as well as faces familiar to the region like Harold Goodwin and Fred Feast.
The film has a very interesting score from Wilfred Josephs that uses several motifs from and variations of another hymn, Jerusalem.