One of my all time favorites.

Instant Favorite.

Beautiful, moving film.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

The series is well acted. The complaint here about "cliches" is itself one. Look up the history and look it up from first-person, eye-witness research. The events are based on real-life experiences and the protagonists being women should not frighten away legitimate historians who understand the time period and the sacrifices British women had to endure. The shape of the events are far closer to real history than some of the bleating-heart (not a typo) critics imagine. Yes, it is a soap opera. That was a given, by the way, to anyone who started watching it. But the position of women in Britain during the war and the dynamics that could and did occur are a part of history that also shapes the future for that society. For that focus, alone the series deserves respect. If the negative critics of this series are Americans, they can be forgiven for their ignorance. If the critics are British, they can only be apologists for the behavior of officials who had totally lost their moral bearings.

This series has some fine actors and those familiar with the BBC will recognize them by face if not by name: Mark Benton, Nathaniel Parker, Danny Webb, and Sophie Ward. Unfortunately they are cast in a series that lacks imagination. Set in WWII, the series follows several land girls, city women who volunteered to work on farms as the men were off in the war, and their clichéd lives. Will the status grubbing one be able to push out the current Lady of the manor and snag her husband; will the incredibly naive one get through her petition to integrate the American troops and deal with her one night leg over and inevitable pregnancy by a roguish American soldier; will the plain married one survive the loss of her handsome flier husband? It is hard to care about any of these characters and contrived hardships. I suggest you spend your time with the vastly superior Call the Midwife.

This program has very fine actors doing their best with woefully inferior scripts. Every character is a stereotype of others we have seen before. Time and time again they behave stupidly in order to advance the plot and intensify the false sense of drama. Sorry, but it just rings hollow and false. There are precious few honest steps taken through the course of "Land Girls." Instead, the audience is manipulated, often with the use of modern PC sensibilities. I have forced myself to watch all fifteen episodes, and it has not been an easy chore. The scripts of Dominique Moloney, Dale Overton, Paul Matthew Thompson, Jude Tindall, Joy Wilkinson, and even series creator Roland Moore fall flat, dumbed down to the shallowest of viewers.And then, in the midst of all this mediocrity, there comes a single brilliant episode that shows what might have been. Rob Kinsman has written a terrific script for "The Enemy Within," which is episode 3 of series 3. Here the dialogue crackles with intelligence. Suddenly, we are confronted with real people, not television templates. After watching "The Enemy Within," I thought perhaps "Land Girls" had finally found its stride. But, alas, it was not meant to be. Back to the same old predictability we go, and our patience is tested by stupid characters behaving stupidly. Clearly, this production should have hired Rob Kinsman from the start and stayed with him for the entire run. Then they might have really had something to be proud of. As it is, all too often the result is embarrassingly bad.

Riddled with clichés, this daytime drama about the land girls (women conscripted to work on the land during World War II) is in five parts and boasts a competent cast in a sanitised script - a very PC and simplistic view of a country under siege.We first meet the four new land girls at the start of the first episode - snooty Nancy (Summer Strallen) who wears high heels and expects a soldier to carry her luggage from the station, sisters Annie (Christine Bottomley) and Bea (Jo Woodcock) - one bitter, one naive, and salt of the earth Joyce (Becci Gemmell) whose family were wiped out in the Coventry bombings. We also meet Esther (Susan Cookson), who keeps the girls in order, black-marketeer and farmer Finch (Mark Benton), and the Lord and Lady of the House (Nathaniel Parker and Sophie Ward).There's also a Home Guard Sergeant, Tucker (Danny Webb) who likes the feeling of being in charge, and in town there's a group of GIs.From here it is very much ticking the boxes - there's an illicit affair, a soldier going AWOL, suspected collaborators, a marriage based on hate, and a bit of political correctness about black GIs and segregation. It's watchable enough but somehow I was expecting a bit more.Although it looks great and as if a bit of money has been thrown at it, Land Girls is historically shaky and very much has the air of 'we've seen all this before'. A bit of a missed opportunity.