Larkin' around

The Larkins are back in a new adaptation of The Darling Buds of May

- HANNAH DAVIES, IAN MACEWAN

NEW COMEDY DRAMA

The Larkins Sunday, ITV HD, 8 pm

It’s 30 years since The Darling Buds of May, the bucolic family comedy-drama set in 1950s rural Kent and starring Sir David Jason and Pam Ferris, became ratings hit – making a young Catherine Zeta-Jones a household name in the process.

Now the much-loved HE Bates novel, on which the series was based, has been reimagined for ITV’s new six-part series The Larkins, in which Bradley Walsh and Joanna Scanlan lead a starry cast as big-hearted couple Pop and Ma Larkin, who live an idyllic life on their Kentish farm with their six children.

Although actor and presenter Walsh has never read the book and didn’t watch the original series, he says larger-than-life Pop still feels like a familiar character.