'The Larkins' Episode 4 Recap: "In Which The Larkins Rescue the Railway Station"

It seems unlikely that anyone is watching Acorn TV's The Larkins for its high-stakes drama. There really isn't any. Each episode usually features an overarching plot, but none of them are what you might call deep. This week, the hour's larger "story", such as it is, involves Pa Larkin turning his sweet grifting skills to saving the town railway station, a move that involves encouraging local school children to take educational rides together as a class, getting town train enthusiasts to help, and bringing in the family's excess strawberry crop to serve as the refreshment cart.

On paper, so little about the Larkin family (and Pa in particular) makes sense - how they're surviving, let alone somehow keeping most of their village afloat at the same time, exactly how it's possible for them to be on-paper broke, yet so consistently unconcerned about the basics of day to day living, exactly what it is that Pa does all day, that kind of thing. And yet, when the word begins to spread that the Littlechurch train station is about to shut down, he springs into action, with the same determination with which he tackles every other problem, despite the fact that we've literally never heard him mention the word train before.

But, though this episode is technically about what it says on the tin - Pa's grand scheme to save the local railway station from closure - it's not really the primary story of the episode or a task that has any real tension in it. We all know from the start that his zany plan will be successful, despite the fact that there's little reason it should be. (A couple of artificially full rides seems unlikely to solve the railway's long-term ridership problems, but happily, Pa also discovers that the local stationmaster has been skimming off the top, so perhaps the trains will survive after all.)