TV review: ITV's The Larkins is a nostalgic wonderland that perhaps didn't exist

Joanna Scanlan and Bradley Walsh in The Larkins

Being locked in our homes for a year supposedly triggered a mass migration from the cities to the countryside.

Bricks-odus? I’ll be staying where a kebab is a viable option at 3am and I’m never more than two miles from a Waitrose, thank you very much, Mr Slater Hogg.

The Larkins didn’t do much to sell me on the charms of country matters. This is the reboot of The Darling Buds Of May which puts it in the same bracket as Batman or James Bond.

Happily ITV have resisted attempts to grittily reimagine HE Bates’ stories for 2021; Pop’s rather handsy approach to women would make him ripe for cancellation anyway.

This was instead a dewy-eyed and wistful look at an earlier age, and one that perhaps didn’t exist.

I’m sure the 1950s Kent countryside was lovely but I’m willing to bet it wasn’t the multicultural liberal utopia as depicted in The Larkins, what with a carousel of Black and Asian characters circling the family.

Not a hint of racism in this nostalgic wonderland; I wonder what changed in the subsequent decades?

Ma Larkin also has a Sex Education-style chat with her son in which he vows never to scare or embarrass any girl he approaches. The original book saw Ma approve of her husband’s Weinsteinesque approach to women.

Rose-tinted glasses? I’ll stick to Waitrose.

The Larkins, ITV