All Creatures Great and Small is back! And while you may still be digesting the first episode, star of the programme, Samuel West, has revealed what you can expect from episode two and the rest of the beloved series. As well as the usual "heartwarming human and animal tales," Sam also opened up about what's in store for his character, Siegfried Farnon, revealing he's "he's having a bit of a midlife crisis."
Talking to the Radio Times, he said: "In the three or four years since we last saw him, he's turned 50, and I think he's having a bit of a midlife crisis. We finished season 5 with the sinking of HMS Repulse. Now we see someone whose increasingly effortful attempts to hold Skeldale House together – or the people in it, which is the same thing really – have failed, and he's gone a bit off the rails."
© Channel 5He added: "He drinks too much, he's neglecting his work, and he's found with different people asleep on his sofa. And, of course, being Siegfried, he insists everything is perfectly fine. He has a great fear of being abandoned, which he does get to talk about – a dangerous thing for someone who doesn’t do well on his own, and whose behaviour, in any case, sometimes pushes people away."
The real-life Yorkshire town
One of the most wonderful thing about the series is the picturesque location it is set in. Although some scenes are in a studio, and the town in which the programme is set is fictional, the cast and crew film lots of the TV Show in Grassington in the southern Yorkshire Dales to provide the perfect 1940s backdrop. Even though many of the indoor scenes were studio-based, a number of real-life landmarks were altered to replicate period buildings, such as pubs and bookshops, for the episodes. For example, a local bookshop, The Stripey Badger, was used to show a greengrocer. Meanwhile, a pub named The Devonshire was used to film exterior scenes for the fictional pub, The Drovers Arms, while The Green Dragon in Hardraw doubled as its interior until series three.
© Helen Williams / Channel 5 / PlaygroundWhilst chatting to HELLO! and other journalists ahead of 2023's Christmas special, Samuel, revealed that a new set of The Drovers was built for series three and is used for a community Christmas celebration. "We built the new set of The Drovers this year because the pub we used to shoot in, sadly lost its lease and it wasn't a pub anymore," Samuel explained. "It was also a very long way away down some very narrow dales and we couldn't easily or very quickly get generators up. So we didn't go there very often. We realised we were losing a bit of tone because the hub of the community is the pub and so many are closing, that we didn't want to go that way and be the village that didn't spend time in ours. So as soon as it was possible to do a big scene in the pub, we did one and it's Christmas."
