“All Creatures Great and Small” and the Search for Serenity

Let's get this over quickly. Yes, Sunday's NFC Championship game was awful -- all the worst aspects of pro football on vivid display. The hotly anticipated 49ers-Eagles showdown -- played in Philadelphia -- began with a show of militaristic pageantry, with an American flag as big as the field, and soon descended from there. 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan inexplicably didn't contest the long Eagles pass-- and non-catch -- that set up Philadelphia's first touchdown. And then 49ers rookie sensation QB, Brock Purdy -- the main reason I was lured back to pro football this year --- got seriously injured on his team's FIRST set of downs. The game was over -- even before Josh Johnson, the FOURTH Niner quarterback this season, sustained a concussion and the desperate team had to send out a wounded Purdy, who was unable to throw. Pathetic. On a wing and a prayer.

As this dismal denouement was playing out, we were barraged with what seemed like even more Americana than usual -- a nonstop parade of commercials for junk food, gas-guzzling pickup trucks, and shoot-'em-up, kickass TV shows.

I'm going to skip the Super Bowl.

Thank God it was Sunday. Only recently I was bitching about the soporific sentimentality of the PBS "Masterpiece" show All Creatures Great and Small. But by the evening, I was looking forward to the latest episode. I want an oasis of calm on Sunday evenings, and to my amazement, this homely little show supplies it.

Last week's episode, which featured actor Samuel West (the standout performer in the cast) and his love for horses (with a disturbing flashback to World War I), was by far the best this season. But I'll take even the show's predictable plots and warmed-over homilies.

Once upon a time, in a nod to Karl Marx, I would've called All Creatures nostalgic fluff that demonstrated the idiocy of rural life.

Now I look forward to Sunday evenings.

It's true, I'm getting old and soft. And the world seems ever more harsh. I need my moments of Zen. Even when they come in corny packages.

Samuel West in All Creatures Great and Small