CABLE TV REVIEW : ‘My Family’: Languorous Life of the Durrells on the Island of Corfu

The visual splendor of tonight’s new 10-part series “My Family and Other Animals,” airing on the Arts & Entertainment cable network at 5 p.m. and 9 p.m., is breathtaking. If the somnolent pace doesn’t put you to sleep and if you can suspend belief long enough to accept an entire island inhabited solely by colorful eccentrics, you’ll be rewarded with balm to city-stressed nerves.

Based on English zoologist and author Gerald Durrell’s account of his family’s five-year stay on the sun-soaked isle of Corfu during the ‘30s, the series is a loving, leisurely stroll through what has to be one of the most idyllic childhoods ever recorded.

The first half-hour episode opens with the Durrells’ island arrival: 10-year-old Gerald (Darren Redmayne), his fey mother (“Upstairs Downstairs’ ” Hannah Gordon) and his much older siblings, cynical Lawrence (Anthony Calf), gun-loving Leslie (Guy Scantlebury) and Margo (Sarah-Jane Holm), who is concerned mainly with young men and blemish medicine. (Author and poet Lawrence would later include among his many remarkable works “The Alexandria Quartet.”)

Aided by Spiro (Brian Blessed, of A&E;’s “The Black Adder”), a blustery Greek who adopts them on their first day, the Durrells set up housekeeping in a villa overlooking the Mediterranean.

Gerald wallows blissfully in the animal and insect life around him, Lawrence listens to the gramophone waiting for inspiration, Leslie shoots at tin cans and Margo endlessly sunbathes, to the intense interest of the locals. Mother picks flowers and concocts barely edible meals, serene in her conviction that she can cook.

A combination of exquisite nature footage, magical childhood memories and a tracery of pungent humor, it all unfolds like a languorous daydream on a sunny day.