TV’S MOST FEELGOOD FAMILY IS BACK

The happy-go-lucky clan at the heart of HE Bates’s Darling Buds Of May books return in The Larkins, an uplifting remake of the hit 90s series. Here we reveal how they brought them back to life...

Rumbunctious, gluttonous, irreverent and utterly joyful, the Larkins are back on TV – and perhaps they’ve never been more needed. As we head into an uncertain winter, the upcoming reboot of The Darling Buds Of May will be as welcome as one of Ma Larkin’s pies or Pop Larkin’s heady cocktails.

From the moment HE Bates introduced the world to the unruly family who live in a Kent farmhouse in 1958 they’ve been much loved. ITV’S adaptation of his books 30 years ago was a huge hit and made a star of Catherine Zeta-jones, who played frisky daughter Mariette (a contraction of Marie Antoinette, which Ma liked but Pa felt was too big a mouthful), alongside David Jason and Pam Ferris as her parents.

‘I think we can learn a lot from a family like this,’ says Bradley Walsh, who plays Pop Larkin, the garrulous wheeler-dealer patriarch, in the sixpart series. ‘I think the pandemic has made people realise how much they

miss people in their lives a ndw ant to stop racing around and spend more time with their family.’

For Joanna Scanlan, in the role of Ma Larkin, who loves nothing more than feeding her brood of six children and anyone else in the village, The Larkins reminds us that pleasure doesn’t need to be prefixed by the word ‘guilty’. ‘I hate that wrong-headed phrase, as we’re not meant to spend our lives on a constant treadmill,’ she says. ‘We live in a society that makes it very hard to feel OK about enjoying life. The Larkins work hard – one episode shows Pop doesn’t stop all day – but they also know how to relax. They know pleasure can be found in good company, a drink and a lovely meal, a few cuddles or just being

Mariette (Catherine Zeta-jones) – plus family and friends, left – in ITV’S version of The Darling Buds Of May in the 1990s