This script has been lightly edited for clarity.

 

 Jace Lacob: I’m Jace Lacob, and you’re listening to MASTERPIECE Studio.

Rolling hills, the smell of spring, driving through the Dales with man’s best friend — All Creatures Great and Small never fails to deliver that ever so sweet bucolic charm. And as Season Four opens, James Herriot soaks it all in. That is, until he almost drives straight into Wesley Binks and his beloved dog, Duke.

 

CLIP

James: Oh! I’m so sorry. 

Wesley: Watch where you’re going.

James: I’m very sorry. I took my eye off for a second— 

 

Back at Skeldale House, Siegfried is predictably flustered. Whether he admits it or not, Tristan’s absence weighs on him heavily. And it doesn’t help that he has given up his beloved pipe for Lent. Even the smallest things seem to set Siegfried off.

 

CLIP

Siegfried: Oh blasted! Put it on the list, syrup of cocillana. Is it so bloody hard to put things back with the labels facing out?!

 

But in time, the warmhearted support of family, friends, the surrounding community, and of course the animals, thaws both Wesley and Siegfried’s icy facades. And Wesley even begins to show signs of a promising future in animal care.

 

CLIP

Wesley: Who takes them out?

Siegfried: Sorry?

Wesley: Well, they can’t stay cooped up in this cage all day. It ain’t right!

Siegfried: They’re only here until they’re well enough to return to their own home.

Wesley: Well, they still need to run around.

Siegfried: I’ll let you discuss this with Mr. Herriot

 

Season 4 lead writer Jamie Crichton joins us this week to discuss themes of humor, love, new beginnings, and how he approached threading all of these endearing storylines together in Episode 1. 

 

Jace Lacob: And this week we are joined by All Creatures Great and Small lead writer Jamie Crichton. Welcome.

Jamie Crichton: Hey, Jace. How are you doing?

Jace Lacob: I’m all right. How are you doing, Jamie?

Jamie Crichton: Very well, thank you. Very well indeed.

Jace Lacob: You are no stranger to MASTERPIECE programs. You’d previously written on Grantchester and All Creatures Great and Small series three. You became the lead writer for series four of All Creatures Great and Small. How did that new role come about?

Jamie Crichton: That is a good question. Well, it was mainly from having such an amazing time doing episode six of series three, which I just adored, loved the team, loved the show, loved everything about it, frankly. And if my memory is correct, I think they’d asked me if I was available to do an episode or two on a prospective series four, which I bit their hand off. And then the showrunner, Ben Vanstone, got his own show greenlit and Melissa asked me if I would be interested in being the lead writer. So, I said, yes, please. Very much so.

So, I mean, it was absolutely the perfect show to sort of take that next step up the rung of the writing ladder. Because, you know, you couldn’t wish for a more nurturing, and happier kind of environment on a show, of course, which I just literally worked on. So, I knew a lot of the people on the show, and I knew the characters and I knew the world. It took all of about half a second to make that decision. And I had the best time. I absolutely loved it.

Jace Lacob: Looking at your CV, this show and this time period would seem to be very much in your métier, as one of your specialties among many at the University of Warwick was World War II literature, not to mention a previous A level in History. Does All Creatures feel like the perfect fusion of your interests in that way?

Jamie Crichton: Good research, Jace. I’ve never really put those together in my mind before, the trajectory from A level History to literature of World War II at Warwick. I think I’m learning as I become more experienced as a writer, the things that I enjoy more and that I think I’m better at. And I think I do enjoy having a historical element to the writing. I enjoy there being a little bit of research to get my teeth into. So, it’s been fun sort of diving into different eras.

I think one of the things I’ve enjoyed most about All Creatures is just that it shines a light on an era where so many of the simpler things, the most beautiful things are things that we have almost unwittingly forgotten in the world that we live in now, or that there’s too many other things to distract us and we don’t realize how important those simple things are. Whether it’s the community or, just the simple pleasures of life; you know, good food, good friendship, having a pint at the pub, whatever it might be.

It’s been so lovely diving into a show where those are the pillars that kind of hold the whole thing up and that you know that it’s going to bring so much pleasure if you get it right to an audience who’ve lost that or who crave that. Or even younger audiences who watch All Creatures who have a connection with it and realize what a lovely time it was and how lovely those things are in life. If that makes sense.

If I look back to what we were talking about in our very first writer’s room, we’re just naturally inclined to try and pack loads of story into it, and to see what actually we ended up with, we stripped out so much, and we just ended up thinking, you know what, that’s a great story for the series, not for that episode. Or we sort of call it the ‘story shrinking machine’, that you feed the plots through to try and strip them back and therefore give them space to breathe.

As writers and viewers, we’ve almost become accustomed to, yes, the terrific pace of people being terrified of losing people’s attention and therefore sort of throwing the kitchen sink at keeping it. And it’s been lovely to realize that actually, if you do something really well and you create characters that we really care about, you want to see the small moments. You want to see the little beats in life, and the little beats that make relationships tick. So, it’s been lovely in that respect.

Jace Lacob: Just to take a step back, I’m just curious, before you joined the writing staff of All Creatures in series three, what was your own relationship with the Alf Wight James Herriot books? Was it something that you had a great deal of familiarity with ahead of time?

Jamie Crichton: I have very vivid memories actually of being on one particular holiday in Majorca when I must’ve been about 10 or 11 and just coming into sort of grumpy teenage adolescence, hadn’t quite hit it yet. But I remember not wanting to be near any of my family, just wanting to be on the beach reading. And I read about five of these books back-to-back. I think that’s all I did that entire holiday. So yes, I did have a very strong affinity with them. I don’t know to what extent they had the same cultural impact in America, but if you were to say to pretty much any British person over the age of about 30 or 40, name a British vet, they’ll say James Herriot.

Jace Lacob: So, you’ve written one episode at this point of All Creatures Great and Small, you get the call, you jump at the chance to become lead writer on series four. And obviously, Ben is still an executive producer, he wrote this year’s Christmas special/finale. What sort of conversations did you have with Ben ahead of moving into this new role?

Jamie Crichton: Well first of all, he has been just the most extraordinarily giving mentor figure. He’s been just amazing. And any nerves I had about filling his shoes and believe me, there were plenty of those, because I just think he’s done such an extraordinary job, he couldn’t have done more to allay those fears and make me feel comfortable.

So, we did several writer’s rooms with all of us together, so Ben was a big part of all that, and incredibly helpful. And he’s been helpful as an exec. along the way as a sounding board. In fact, it’s been so helpful to have not just his fresh eyes, but obviously his hugely experienced eyes in an All Creatures sense to be able to share a draft of an episode and just bring his voice in, say, what do you think of this? And do you have the same instincts that we do?

It’s been just so lovely having such a great team. There’s him and there’s Melissa, and two of the best script editors you could possibly hope for, Alice Northey and Donna Metcalfe. It’s just been a joyous, joyous experience for me. And yes, if all TV jobs were as great as this one, then we’d be very lucky.

Jace Lacob: You wrote the very first episode of this series, “Broodiness”, is the episode title. And to me, it’s such a perfect jewel box of an episode. It’s so precisely crafted, and it captures the very essence and tone of the show. You’d previously written these characters, but what were your aims with your first foray as lead writer with this episode?

Jamie Crichton: I mean, first of all, we can’t really talk about this without talking about the glaring absence of Tris in our world. Having him off at war is obviously going to change the dynamic of Skeldale and change everyone to a certain extent. This is going to sound paradoxical, it’s the same, but different. It’s the same world that we wanted to inhabit, but clearly there’s a sense that things have moved on a bit.

When we initially talked about what this season might be about, what was going to define this season, we kept coming back to ideas like, accepting the changes that have been forced upon our world. As well as finding the joy in little things and returning to core values in the face of change. These are the sort of thematic discussions that we had. But at the very beginning of this season, season four, so we’re in early 1940, it’s a sort of strange no man’s land, if you’ll pardon the pun, of war happening but not happening. War has broken out and yet it hasn’t really affected anyone in Darrowby. Aside from people being called up, it hasn’t made its presence felt.

So, there’s that sense of trepidation of terrible things are going to happen soon, but they’re not really yet. And it’s not really encroached on our lives. Even things like rationing and blackout blinds and all those kinds of measures hadn’t really fully taken effect at this stage. So, it’s a strange hinterland of being in the first year of war and yet, war not really having taken hold fully.

Jace Lacob: And it’s Easter. It’s a time of rebirth and new beginnings. Even somewhat thematically, it’s perfect both for the new beginning for these storylines within All Creatures and also for the show under your helm. How did you settle upon the various storylines for this episode, which all involve either letting go or new beginnings, which is what parenting is really about.

Jamie Crichton: Right, yes. Very astute observations on your part. I’m glad that’s what you took from it, exactly what we’d hoped. The new beginnings is, without spoiling too much, it’s not spoiling to say that James and Helen are in a strange limbo themselves. Tristan has been called up and James has obviously signed up with the RAF, which has just meant by dint of how things worked out that he may never get call up papers. Signing up, putting your name down for the RAF doesn’t mean you’re going to be joining the RAF.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of hindsight and knowing exactly how long the war did last. It could go so many different ways. James could never be called up. He could be called up any day. The war could last for a few months. It could last for years. It could last for a decade. Nobody knows anything. So, it’s such a difficult time for a young, newly married couple to work out what they’re going to do. Do they want to start a family? If they do start a family, and then James does get called up immediately, what does that mean?

And it’s different from James’s perspective as it is from Helen’s perspective. I think he’s slightly asking himself those questions, thinking, well, is it quite a selfish thing to try for a child because if I get called up, then I’m literally leaving my wife holding the baby. And Helen’s perspective might be slightly different. It might be, well, if he’s going to get called up and I don’t really want to imagine the worst, but you have to imagine that the worst might happen, if he doesn’t come back, I want something of my husband. I want some memory of him.

So, these kinds of questions were the ones going through our heads when we were plotting out how we might start the series of like, what would it look like? Do they want to have a child? Do they not want to start a family? And I think slightly deeper from James’s point of view, is he even father material? It’s not something that he’s particularly comfortable talking about. But I think deep down, he has a fear that he’s not a very good father or that he won’t be a good father. And this is one of those things that we’ve tried to address with the animal stories. We always try to play everything through the animal stories in this show, because it’s about animals.

So yes, the dog story and the story of the young boy in episode one is an attempt to try and show James that actually, there is a paternal side to him that has been dormant or that he didn’t really know was there. I just think it’s a lovely story as it’s played out.

Jace Lacob: I do love that James sort of slots in between Wesley Binks and Clifford Slavens, two sort of parallel stories about either being a child or being a parent, with James considering becoming a father. And the Wesley Binks plot does take a significant departure from how it plays out in All Things Wise and Wonderful, where the poor dog ends up dying from distemper, giving both Wesley and Duke a much happier ending here than Alf White did. What was behind your decision to change the outcome of the dog’s story and Wesley’s here?

Jamie Crichton: I mean, come on, Jace, we can’t start with killing a poor dog. That would have been too bleak! As much as I’m being slightly flippant in saying that there’s an element of truth in that. It’s quite a dark time. Even in as warm and cozy a place as Skeldale, with these sort of forces looming in the background anyway.

Also, it ties in with what you were saying about hope for the future and what their future decisions would be. It felt entirely right that we could try and bring together those two stories, the Wesley Binks story, and the story of Clifford Slavens, and give us some hope. It’s part of the DNA of the show really, using human connections to heal wounds and to bring hope. Yeah, it felt like the right decision and a good marriage of those two themes.

Jace Lacob: We get a happy ending, yeah. I love the final exchange at Clifford Slaven’s farm between the two of them. And the fact that the resolution of this entire situation involving Wesley Binks and Clifford Slavens has such a positive outcome for everyone involved. Does this interaction with Wesley, is it the thing that perhaps then spurs James more strongly towards fatherhood? Do you think that without this interaction with Wesley, he might have still been more on the fence?

Jamie Crichton: Yeah, it’s a good question. I think, yes. I think it’s removed a subconscious barrier that perhaps he wasn’t even fully aware of, he wouldn’t necessarily articulate, he wouldn’t either be aware of it enough or it’s just not something that a man like James at that time would talk very openly about. But I’m pretty sure there is this subconscious or unconscious barrier that he’s been feeling that he just doesn’t think he’s got it in him. He doesn’t think he’s a good enough dad.

And it’s such a lovely relationship that those two have in this episode. Once he realizes he’s got Wesley wrong and takes him under his wing, it’s so beautiful watching that relationship that you can’t help but get a flash forward of seeing what James Herriot, the father, would be like. And yeah, he’s going to be a great dad and Helen knows that all along. So, I think it’s a pivotal moment for him in realizing that yes, he does want to start a family. He does want to be a father.

 

MIDROLL

 

Jace Lacob: We talked about tone earlier. It might be difficult to find that lovely humor when you have the war going on in the background outside the Dales, of course, but it’s still there. And Tristan is away serving, James could be called up at any time. But this episode in particular shows off an almost French Farce-like potential of the standing Skeldale house set and the comedic strengths of these actors. And it also reminds us that even without Tristan, and even with the war on, there’s still a lot of humor to be mined in this setting. How vital do you see humor being within All Creatures Great and Small?

Jamie Crichton: Oh God, yeah, it’s so, so important. We’re always looking for the lightness in the stories, in the episodes. Some of it comes quite organically. There might be a story about a dog with an amusing complaint. There might be something which automatically lends itself to lightheartedness, to humor. If there’s not, then yes, we definitely try and find it because you’ve got to have the light and the shade.

Without the humor, the emotional beats don’t land as hard or as powerfully. And actually, often in the same scene, there’s something more powerful about having a really emotional, strong, even tear-jerking moment undercut with a lighthearted comment or, we used to call them the honey cutter moments, a line that will underplay everything and bring a smile. Because, apart from the fact that it makes it feel less worthy, it’s a sort of paradox. It brings out the emotional power of the deeper moment of the scene by raising a smile or a laugh at the end of it. So yeah, it’s a really important part of the series as a whole. But yes, even in episodes like this, which, on the surface, don’t look like they’re going to be full of laughs, we do try and find some.

There’s the story about Helen being recruited by Siegfried to help out and to order the veterinary supplies. And she gets annoyed with him for mistrusting her and says, if I do something, Siegfried, I’ll do it properly. And then of course gets it slightly wrong.

 

CLIP

Delivery Man: Delivery, for Farnon.

Mrs. Hall: Are you sure? What on Earth is it?

Delivery Man: Sterile dressings it says here.

Helen: I ordered six dozen rolls.

Delivery Man: No, you ordered six dozen boxes. There’re six boxes in each one.

 

Jamie Crichton: And in an episode when Siegfried is being particularly cantankerous and grumpy, it does add to the fun of, how do you hide your mistake from Siegfried when he’s in one of these moods? So yeah, we do look for opportunities to bring in the humor.

Jace Lacob: The answer to that is to hide them all over Skeldale House before Siegfried finds out, which I love. And to me it manages, that moment, not only to add humor, but as you say, to sort of build on the emotionality of what’s happening here. We as an audience and these characters deeply feel Tristan’s absence, that sense of humor, and we feel the close quarters that all of these people are living and working within. Was this a rather winking way, perhaps, then of putting Helen in Tristan’s usual dynamic with Siegfried?

Jamie Crichton: Yeah, I think, over the course of the season as a whole, we’ve tried to fill the Tristan shaped gap in a variety of different ways. I think we all agree we’re not going to just replace Tristan. We’re not going to have another vet come in and basically be the new Tristan. That immediately instinctively felt wrong to everyone. What we did acknowledge was that Tristan’s presence and what he brings to the show, you know, the humor, the mischief, we had to find a way of making sure we didn’t lose that.

So, I think at different times over the course of the series, different characters do kind of step into that. James’s relationship with Siegfried changes slightly. There’s a sense that because he’s no longer got the Tristan buffer between him and Siegfried, he often has to take on Tris’s work and feels that he’s now got the target on his back that he used to have before Tristan arrived.

I think everyone misses Tris, and everyone misses the fun that he brought. And I’m definitely not saying the show is better without Tristan, it is not better without Tristan. But in many ways what it does to the relationships is it allows them to breathe in a way that, you know, if you’re writing an episode and Skeldale suddenly only has three or four characters in it, as opposed to four or five, that may not sound like much, but it’s a huge difference when you’re writing it. It suddenly gives you this space that you didn’t realize you had and could be so valuable to see how those relationships in Skeldale change.

And I think what it shows more than anything else is that Skeldale itself as a sanctuary has its own kind of beating heart, and everything that it represents. It’s a port in the storm. It’s this sort of safe place that in and of itself offers refuge and has this kind of warmth to it that can’t help but make people want to be there. Which yeah, I think is very important from an audience perspective as well. You really feel that I hope.

Jace Lacob: What I love about it, I think, is, as you say, you do feel this Tristan shaped hole. The characters’ dynamics do morph. I think a lot of shows would have actively avoided invoking Tristan here, but this show doesn’t. Without spoiling anything, his presence is felt, and his absence is acknowledged in a meaningful way. And I think because of that, it does allow these relationships to develop in interesting and unusual ways where, as you say, they couldn’t have before, but it still acknowledges that loss that these people would be feeling during this very turbulent time.

Also in this episode, we do see Siegfried at his usual level of persnicketiness, what with quitting tobacco and giving Helen hell about the supplies.

 

CLIP

Helen: I made a mistake with the order.

Siegfried: A mistake? We have enough gauze to see out the decade.

Helen: I’m sorry, I…

Siegfried: Where’s my tobacco?

 

Jace Lacob: But we also see a very different Siegfried in this episode as well. There’s that really quiet show of tenderness as he sets down the cup of tea for Audrey.

 

CLIP

Siegfried: Yes, it must be hard to dredge all of that stuff up.

Mrs. Hall: Well, it’s between Robert and me. No one else.

Siegfried: Sometimes we have to look that monster right in the face. Show it we’re not afraid of it anymore.

Mrs. Hall: Well, it’s not that I don’t want to. Because I do, desperately.

Siegfried: Why don’t you use my study? I promise you, once it’s done, you’ll feel like a new woman. I can see to it that you’re not disturbed.

 

Jace Lacob: Is that Siegfried perhaps at his most compassionate, most supportive?

Jamie Crichton: Oh, I love that scene. I think that is such a beautiful distillation of what this show is. It’s a show where bringing another character a cup of tea can speak volumes, can say more than any beautifully written line could ever say. It’s the little gestures that make big waves in our show. I think, again, without going too deep into that storyline, there are questions about, for all of our characters, about the past and about the future and about reconciling, I mean, for Mrs. Hall, reconciling her feelings for Gerald. Of course, we ended season three with a big moment when she and Gerald kissed. So, you know, for Mrs. Hall reconciling her feelings for Gerald with the fact that she’s a married woman and a devout Christian, her story across the series asks questions which pertain to that, as well as how she fits into Skeldale, where her heart is, and those kinds of questions.

And for Siegfried, it’s not just about coping without his infuriating but beloved brother around. It’s about working out who he is and where he is in his life and who the important people are in his life and what makes him tick and what makes Skeldale, Skeldale. And I think by the end of the series those questions have become a lot clearer in his mind, shall we say?

Jace Lacob: There is an inherent tension in All Creatures between altruism and looking after oneself. James puts everyone else first, often at the expense of his own well-being. Tristan tries to sort out who he is, independent of Siegfried. Mrs. Hall puts off exploring a romantic relationship with Gerald, initially because she made an oath before God. Siegfried does his best to look after those he loves, though it’s often at everyone else’s expense. Is there an overall message All Creatures is offering in regard to this? Is it better to put others first, or is it best to look after yourself?

Jamie Crichton: That’s a very good question. Having lived and breathed the All Creatures world for a year or two, it feels like it is a place where it’s all about altruism. It feels like every character ultimately has more of an altruistic view of the world than most contemporary characters you’d see. And I think that’s partly what makes it an appealing show to watch because that kind of altruism is rarer than we would like it to be, perhaps. Again, back to the community, back to the popping around to a neighbor’s for a cup of sugar or, you know, the sense of community, the looking out for each other, looking out for neighbors, making sure that everyone is okay, I think is such an important part of the show.

And it’s so often played through the animals. The animals give such a great opportunity to play, especially with slightly stoical Yorkshire characters, give an opportunity to play sort of unexpected, emotional stories. And I think that’s also another part of why the show resonates with a lot of people. It’s so easy to forget that animals play such an important part in so many people’s lives, whether it’s the family dog or the family cat, or whether it’s an old lady or an old man living on their own and their pet is the only living creature in their lives and it means so much to them. It’s often easy to forget how important that relationship is. So yeah, I think there’s something that’s so uplifting about that, about the human animal relationships.

Jace Lacob: This is a show that is phenomenally successful on both sides of the Atlantic. Why do you think ultimately these stories connect so palpably with audiences in the 2020s? What is it about these specific stories that resonates so sharply with audiences today?

Jamie Crichton: Yeah, I think first and foremost, given the abundance of programs that you can now watch across all the various platforms, there aren’t many that have the heart, that have the level of comfort that All Creatures has. There are other genres that are so well served and shows that offer comfort viewing and that give you all the warm feelings that All Creatures does, are few and far between.

And I think what people love about All Creatures, and this is all credit to, this is Ben Vanstone, he created the show as it is, and created the characters and the DNA and the tone, which is almost the hardest thing to come up with, and I think he understood that what so many people crave is not just harking back to simpler times. It’s not the simplicity, it’s not just the community or the warmth, it’s the whole package. It’s understanding that relationships, that caring for one another, that looking out for one another, that bringing somebody a cup of tea and giving them some privacy can be such an important and emotionally wonderful thing to do.

Jace Lacob: TV lives, I think, largely in large, big moments. This is a show that sort of lives in small, human moments of connection. I could speak for another hour with you, Jamie, because we’ve just scratched the surface. There’s so much more I want to ask you about, but I will end by just asking what is next for you?

Jamie Crichton: There’s nothing I can talk about yet. Sorry if that’s a boring answer. I’ll tell you what I’ll be doing on Christmas Eve in the UK though, or a few days before Christmas Eve, and that is getting myself a cup of tea, sitting down and watching the Christmas episode on television. There’s something so gorgeous about watching it here with Christmas closing in and putting your feet up and just embracing all the Christmassy feels that an All Creatures Christmas special gives you. So, I’m very much looking forward to Ben’s amazing episode.

Jace Lacob: I will say I did watch it the other night with a cup of tea, under the lights of our Christmas tree, which is up in our front window, and it was magical.

Jamie Crichton: There you go, you know how to do it.

Jace Lacob: I know how to do it. Jamie Crichton, thank you so very much.

Jamie Crichton: Thank you, Jace. It’s been a pleasure.

 

Next time, the controlled chaos of Skeldale House has met its match when a new arrival turns up at the practice.

 

CLIP

Mrs. Hall: Have you come far?

Miss Harbottle: Oh, uh, from Brawton. I’ve just finished at Henshaw’s. The feed merchants.

Mrs. Hall: Oh.

Miss Harbottle: Secretary, clerk, and assistant to the manager.    

 

Tune in next week for our conversation with All Creatures Great and Small actor Neve McIntosh.