Farthing Wood Deaths Revisited: Series 2 - Mrs. Field-Mouse

We're into Series 2 of The Animals of Farthing Wood, and whereas Series 1 waited until the third episode before it started killing off characters, here the carnage commences almost immediately.

Note that, with the location formerly known as Farthing Wood far behind them, the animals were now considered to be "of Farthing Wood" purely in spirit - Series 1 concluded with them reflecting upon how much they had been through together on their journey, and deciding that they would continue to honour the Oath and retain their inter-species friendships, even if they did now plan on going their separate ways.  At the start of Series 2, Fox naturally assumes that they will no longer require his leadership and is looking forward to settling down with Vixen, but it doesn’t take long for things to go off the rails.

Series 2 was actually an amalgam of three different Farthing Wood novels – In The Grip of Winter, Fox’s Feud and The Fox Cub Bold.  All things considered, I think that they did a pretty good job of making the series flow convincingly as a singular story, the key focus being Fox’s rivalry with Scarface, an antagonistic blue fox who was accustomed to throwing his weight around at White Deer Park, and saw Fox’s arrival as an immediate challenge.  The “blue” foxes were frankly a bit of an oddity – I’m assuming that they were actually intended to be silver foxes, a melanistic variation of the red fox – though I believe that this was more a case of the TV series making everything neatly colour-coded (in the book, if I recall correctly, Scarface and his family were ordinary red foxes).  I’m also pretty sure that silver foxes don’t live in large wolf-like packs, as depicted here, but I’m willing to let that go.

Life’s full of cruel ironies sometimes, and no Farthing animal experienced this harder than Mrs. Field-Mouse, who survived the long trek to White Deer Park against the odds, only to be done in shortly after arrival, by one of her own travelling companions at that.  The animals may have decided to extend the bounds of the Oath and remain friends within White Deer Park, but this didn’t always work out in practice.  Case in point - Kestrel catches, kills and devours Mrs. Field-Mouse in the first episode of Series 2, all on account of mistaken identity.  She only later realises her error, when she has an angry and tearful Mr. Field-Mouse to contend with.  “How embarrassing!” Kestrel exclaims, at least fifty times throughout the remainder of the episode.

With this death, we also see the start of a long and frankly rather irritating pattern throughout Series 2 - which is to say, if you’re a minor character AND a Mrs, then you’re basically fucked.  As my coverage of Series 2 continues, you'll notice that it is largely the female characters who'll wind up in these pages, at least where the supporting cast is concerned.  This may even have come from the original Colin Dann novels – not only were nearly all of the important characters male therein, but I do seem to recall that he had an overwhelming preference for killing off female characters over males.

HORROR FACTOR: 9. Certainly one of the more disturbingly-executed deaths that the series had to offer.  We see things from a screaming Mrs. Field-Mouse’s perspective as Kestrel swoops on her, followed by an ominous flash and the screen going eerily red.

NOBILITY FACTOR: 3. Nourishing a friend technically is helping them, although it hardly fits the definition of “Mutual Protection”.

TEAR-JERKER FACTOR: 2. Mr. Field-Mouse’s sorrow aside, this death is more toe-curling than anything else.

RATING: 14