The Durrel's gets better and better (and it started pretty good!) it's perfect Sunday night "8pm" watching - (writing as someone who like GoT/Breaking bad/etc/etc!), it's nice to have something that makes you laugh and chuckle! The third series still has it and I think even better than the first 2! :-)

This tells the story of a 1930's typical English family moving to Corfu and trying to make a life and living. Normally I can't stand heart warming fuzzy stuff like this. Period stuff even more. Yet this is nice to watch. They are a nice family and get on most of the time. They occasionally fall out. They don't spend their time trying to get one over each other or others. There is little swearing and sex (no nudity other than the odd bare shoulder). It is just a nice program to watch. I have never read the books and never would. This though tugs at the heart strings and is generally a nice little program to watch with all the family.

I began watching this series before realizing I had seen the earlier (and better) feature: "My Family and Other Animals" that was adapted from Gerald Durrell's writings back in 2005.For this recent series, writer Simon Nye seemed to think his screenplay for these already beloved stories, needed to be updated from the more realistic 1930's Corfu to a more overtly out-of-place 'modern' 1930's Corfu. The characters come across as too liberated for this era and often quite aggressively annoying. No longer are we seeing life unfold from a child's eyes (as the perspective of the books) but from an all too modern 'mothers' perspective. The first three episodes directed by Steve Barron were enjoyably bearable but Episode 4 directed by Roger Goldby falls over its own modernity and, like most made for TV serials, introduces stereo typical characters and situations lifted out of far too many other similar programs. The longer some TV series are allowed to run the more predictable and uninteresting they all too often become. Viewers who just like to watch formulaic stories may not even notice this, but from the string of other reviews posted for this one - it seems I'm definitely not the only one who felt let down. I won't be looking forward to continuing with what would have been better left as a movie (or maybe two) before it killed itself off. The locations are good and some will enjoy this version but, purists might not persist.

I only read one Durrell's book an it is not from the Corfu trilogy, so I was not familiar with it. On the first watch it was painful to see how obnoxious and stupid those children are. They started to live in the house with no water and electricity which is falling apart, with no money and most of the time without the proper food, and they are no help at all. Just concerned on their own selfish interests. I don't know if this is done for the comic effect or it is described like this in the books, but it was really annoying to watch. Fortunately series does have some charms and actors are good in portraying idiots in unusual situations in foreign country so I have stuck to it and after fourth episode I have learned to love it. As they adjusted more to the life on Corfu it became much easier to watch they predicaments and strange reactions and eventually they grow somehow on you. Some things are, I assume, better explained in the books. Like, how did they manage to feed all those animals with so little food even for themselves, but that's television for you. I think the lesson from this story is: bigger the idiot more luck you have. I am looking forward to the second season.