All Creatures Great and Small Christmas Special: Cast share behind the scenes filming secrets and their hopes for the future

“I’m saving my Christmas episode, as I did for the last two years, to watch on the sofa with my parents on Christmas Eve, because, rather to my surprise, they rather like it,” says Samuel West, who plays irascible Darrowby head vet Siegfried Farnon.

“I don’t get as many notes as I used to,” he adds. “It’s mostly about my dad wondering when we are going to invite him to be in it. He put a hand on my knee and said ‘Terrific’, after last year’s episode.”

This year’s special brings to a close series four of the hugely popular Channel 5 adaptation, launched in 2020 and based on the globally-revered James Herriot books penned by Thirsk vet Alf Wight. It is Christmas 1940 and we find James at an RAF training base, separated from his wife, Helen (Rachel Shenton), who is heavily pregnant and being looked after by Siegfried and Skeldale housekeeper Mrs Hall (Anna Madeley).

We see Helen at her most vulnerable, Rachel says. “She’s had a couple of twinges and is generally feeling a bit fed up and unwell. Siegfried and Mrs Hall play the kind of mum and dad figures in the house at that point, and get involved and ultimately contribute to the decision that it’s best for her to stay where she is and not visit James. I think that’s incredibly hard. She’s just desperate for that kind of connection with him.”

Nicholas says: “When he signed up, Helen wasn’t pregnant. Things were very very different and, if she was back then, who knows what decision he would have made? He is missing her hugely and missing the family, but also finding this camaraderie and this brotherly love.”

Nicholas spent a week away from the other main cast members filming at the Yorkshire Air Museum, which sits on the former site of Bomber Command Station RAF Elvington, near York. “It is just as it was in World War II, the barracks are still there, the mess hall. Very little had to be done to dress it,” he says. “Just being there, surrounded by all the planes, it just transforms you into that world.

“It was that kind of separation from the surrogate family in Skeldale, as it was for so many during that time, and more recently with Covid, and so it really played into that feeling.

“I did miss the guys when I was away, and I was hearing about all the things that I would normally be involved with, filming wise, back in Summerbridge or wherever we would be in Yorkshire, so it worked well in that way as well. I was very much there kind of by myself.”

Rachel quips: “We had quite a good week without him, actually.” Samuel says: “There is a lot of absence in this season and, obviously, absence is invisible. Somebody told me, you know you’re making something good when you’re filming what’s invisible, and I think you can tell, absence is shot through a lot of it, it gives it a tone, and Nick’s absence is one of them that we really feel.”

Rachel: “There is always such a heavy theme, particularly in the Christmas episode, of community and togetherness, and this year is no exception and I think Helen is usually at the heart of it. She gets her significance from helping others and this is the first year that she has had to receive that because, well, one, she is missing James desperately, she’s heavily pregnant so can’t physically move around and help people, so she has no choice but to sit back and allow that community to help her, particularly the smaller Skeldale community of Siegfried and Mrs Hall, so that was new and you see her probably at her most vulnerable, which was nice to play, and different.”

The relationship between Siegfried and Mrs Hall has intrigued All Creatures fans from the start. To the frustration of those who long to see them become closer, they still address each other, most of the time, as Mr Farnon and Mrs Hall. “Theirs is a complicated relationship,” says Anna. “It’s formal, which is right for their generation, but it doesn’t have the distance that it might have if we were using it today. Whether they will ever stop using it or not, in a moment where she’s not cross with him, we don’t know.”

Samuel says: “We are surprisingly and unusually friends as well as employee-employer, but whether anything will change in that remains to be seen, but the formality of it is what keeps that tension interesting. The temptation might be to say, ‘Oh, when are they going to take off their corsets and spread out?’, but that’s a modern sensibility, where people very rarely know each other’s surnames. You have to know somebody quite well now to know their surname.”

Anna says: “We didn’t know Mrs Hall’s first name for quite a long time.” Samuel quickly adds: “Intriguing though it is when we find out when we finally discover it.” (It’s Audrey, the name of the real wife of the real Siegfried, Donald Sinclair.)

The Christmas episode was filmed in June, like last year in swelteringly hot conditions, prompting much ribbing among the close-knit cast. “Nick running across Grassington square in a huge overcoat on the hottest day of the year is my Christmas wish,” says Samuel. Rachel laughs: “Wearing factor 50 all over his face.”

The lovely decorations of the Skeldale set at Summerbridge help set the festive mood, she says. “And there were Quality Street in little bowls around the house as well, which I found useful.”

With Darrowby increasingly touched by war, the community comes together. Anna says: “We are having Christmas lunch in The Drovers, our lovely local pub, for which we have had a new set built, which is beautiful and amazing, and very exciting. You won’t be able to tell the difference.”

This new set was created following the closure of The Green Dragon at Hardraw, used for the interiors of the first two series. “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 much time in ours,” says Samuel. “So, as soon as it was possible to do a big scene in the pub, we did one.”

Even Mrs Pumphrey (Patricia Hodge) and Tricki Woo (Derek) turn up at The Drovers, joining Helen’s sister, Jenny Alderson (Imogen Clawson), and father, Richard (Tony Pitts).

Rachel says: “One of my favourite interactions in the pub is Richard Alderson with Mrs Pumphrey, when he asks her if she wants a drink and she orders a double, and he’s so put out. It wouldn’t be a Christmas episode without Mrs Pumphrey and Tricki now.”

Trainee vet Richard Carmody, played by newcomer James Anthony-Rose, also seems quite at home in The Drovers. James says: “There’s something nice about seeing characters in different contexts, like Carmody and Mrs Pumphrey in the pub,” James says. “And because it’s Christmas time, that sense of community becomes heightened and that’s really nice to watch and hopefully that just lights up the screen. One of our writers recently said it’s sort of like a virtual fireplace in the living room.”

Carmody, James adds, is beginning to feel that he belongs at Skeldale, too. “He is not used to having a family Christmas, so sitting around a table and having Christmas dinner and exchanging Christmas presents is quite alien to him. He realises that there is a place for him at the dinner table, and that’s a lovely thing to see.”

Sadly, Tristan (Callum Woodhouse) does not make it home even for Christmas, as he is still away serving with the Royal Army Veterinary Corps. Callum, like Tristan, is much missed.

Nicholas says: “We all miss Tristan. For James, Tristan is normally his best mate, his brother in the surrogate home for the past few years, and took James under his wing.”

Like Samuel, Rachel and Nicholas will be watching the special with loved ones. Nicholas says: “I’ll be back home in the highlands of Scotland. I'll watch it with all the family,who are really looking forward to it.” Rachel says: “Same, I’ll be in the Midlands with family.”

At the time of writing, a fifth series is yet to be announced, although the cast members seem keen. “We are not the ones that make those decisions, unfortunately,” Rachel says.

However, all the signs are positive for a green light. “There are loads of stories that are still fantastic to tell,” says Anna. Samuel says: “My dream is to have a scene in series five with Rachel, where we both get to ride together because I know she’s a good horsewoman, and I’m not, neither good nor a woman, but I can practise. But also where they say, ‘can you do this?’ and you say, ‘not quite’, they pay you to practise. I’m talking entirely notionally, about if we get to have one.

“I think we are all still having a very nice time,” he adds. “There are lots of things we would still love to film. We seem to have made our home in the Dales now.”

• The All Creatures Great and Small Christmas Special is on tonight, Thursday, December 21, at 9pm, after All Creatures Great and Small: Yorkshire Vet Special at 8pm. Series 4 of All Creatures is now on My5.