The two episodes of Mackenzie Crook's rebooted "Worzel Gummidge" that aired at Christmas 2019 were among the most unexpectedly wonderful shows I saw that year. Charming, with a romantic eye for the British Countryside, but legitimately funny, some of the success came perhaps from me not expecting much. Perhaps that too is why this year's single addition to the series felt OK, but didn't quite hit the same heights.
Worzel (Mackenzie Crook), comes across an old friend of his at a reclamation yard. Saucy Nancy (Shirley Henderson) is a former ship masthead, long since detached from her vessel but still with dreams of returning to the coast and feeling the sea air. Along with two kids who know the truth about scarecrows, Susan (India Brown) and John (Thierry Wickens) Worzel endeavours to transport the foul-mouthed Nancy back to the coast.
I say foul mouthed but being a family show Nancy's language comes in the form of quaint euphemisms and idioms that don't quite track to actual swearwords. Much of your enjoyment of this episode may reflect on how much you can deal with Shirley Henderson's squeaky voice. It was a bit much for me. The story of this episode didn't wrap up as well as the previous two. Vanessa Redgrave has a mystical role as Peg, which I assumed was going to help with the conclusion of Nancy's story, but in effect the two aspects of the story were mostly unrelated. The visual effect, of Nancy turning to and from wood is really well done though.
It was still a good episode, still just as charming and funny as the previous two, it's just perhaps the story wasn't quite a well realised as the previous episodes were and that my expectations were raised by the success of the previous episodes. I still want more though.