How All Creatures Great and Small actor Samuel West delights fans with posts and location photographs while filming Season 5 in the Yorkshire Dales

Samuel, who plays Darrowby’s mercurial head vet Siegfried Farnon, has 110k followers on X (formerly known as Twitter), where he posts as @exitthelemming. He has kept All Creatures fans entertained with commentary, music recommendations, history, poetry and photographs as the cast and crew have been making the Channel 5/Playground series across a range of locations in the Yorkshire Dales, as well as at the studios in Summerbridge, where there are sets for the interiors of Skeldale House and The Drovers pub.

After his final on-location post last week, fans thanked him for the insight and the beautiful locations photos he had posted. “Thanks for the travelogue! And now we wait,” wrote one fan, while another replied: “Thanks for the regular updates and teases during filming. “I’m going to miss this thread, thank you for keeping us entertained. Looking forward to the autumn.”

Grassington bookshop The Stripey Badger, which is dressed as GF Endleby Grocers for the series, posted: “See you next year”, a reference to the commissioning of series six of All Creatures Great and Small.

Samuel launched his S5 #ACGAS X thread back in February when filming began, posting a picture of the first clapperboard with his own little poems, confirming that the team was reunited and ready for action: “We love our job. And that’s the reason, We return for each new season. And we are all full of zest and drive, As we embark on Series 5.”

Samuel highlighted future stars for viewers to look out for. In early April, he posted pictures of Beatrix the Basset Hound, writing: “Beatrix has a walk-on part in an early S5 episode and performed it with aplomb.”

There is poetry. On April 12, he posted a photograph of a hillside of fields darkening under blue skies, writing: “Today the Dales are reminding me of Larkin’s war poem MCMXIV (1914) “...and fields/ shadowing Domesday lines/ Under wheat’s restless silence”.

He has made music recommendations: “Starting the day in the #ACGAS make-up chair with this slice of brilliance, recorded 97 years ago. Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven, May 10, 1927. His final stop-time solo is one of the most joyous noises ever made by humans.”

In mid April, he wrote: “Halfway through filming Series 5, and to celebrate, here’s our Series 4 playlist,” adding: “I usually DJ for our early morning starts in the #AGCAS make-up truck.”

Samuel also shared his love for the Yorkshire Dales locations, posting from Arncliffe, Kettlewell and Hubberholme, “a Wharfedale village which JB Priestley called ‘the smallest, pleasantest place in the world”.

There have been jokes: “In the #ACGAS make-up chair again. When you’re a young actor, they paint bags under your eyes. When you’re older, they just don’t paint out the ones you’ve got already.”

There was a quiz on interior design, with images of four walls: “Some people watch #AllCreaturesGreatandSmall very carefully (which keeps us on our toes), so I wondered if they might like a quiz to start the week. Our designer Jackie Smith has great taste in wallpaper. Which rooms in Skeldale House do these papers come from?”

In May, he informed that filming had taken place at Oakworth Station, noting that it was where The Railway Children’s famous “Daddy, my Daddy” final scene was shot.

Vintage cars also feature on the X thread, especially Siegfried’s green Rover 12 Sports Tourer.

As filming began to draw to a close in mid-June, Samuel wrote: “We’ve been out on location for the past fortnight. Everyone’s working very hard. Especially the camera crew,” with a photo of crew members taking five on the grass.

He also posted a photo of co-stars Rachel Shenton and Anna Madeley: “Rach and Anna and Rehearsal Jimmy photosynthesising in the Arncliffe sunshine.”

And he highlighted a young star to look out for: “You only get to make your TV debut once. We’re very glad that the terrific young actor Olivia Paige Marsh made hers with #AllCreaturesGreatandSmall.”

A keen bird watcher, Samuel West often posts photos and musings about wildlife he finds in the Yorkshire Dales: “After five years, #ACGAS has become a tiny part of the rhythm of the Dales. Our on-set vet Andy Barrett texts me when he hears the first curlew in February, saying “You must be back soon”. The curlew’s haunting song is a constant soundtrack. Here’s one near my digs this evening.”

At the end of June, Samuel joked that S5 filming was repeating its “Classic #AllCreaturesGreatAndSmall ‘filming-Christmas-in-June’ scenario: cracking ice packs to keep cool while filming a scene set on Christmas Day 1941, when the temperature in the Dales was closer to 8C than 23C like today,” then thanking the Met Office for its useful archive of daily weather reports.

His All Creatures X followers also learned that he was preparing an end-of shoot quiz for cast and crew, and he showed photos of his wrap gifts - a fleece jacket from the make-up crew embroidered with “Creatures Great and Small 5 Acting Department”, and a set of three stamps featuring his own head (as Siegfried) in profile, writing: “If you’re a stamp collector and bore the art department silly about the 1940 change in postal costs and the new 2d postcard rate, this is what they give you as a wrap gift.”

On the final day of filming last week, Samuel posted: “Final slate. That’s a wrap on Series 5. Out in the autumn in UK, new year in North America. Hope you enjoy it. Lemming out.”

Mella, a fan from Berlin was one of many to express gratitude at his X reports, writing: “Thanks for the wonderful thread throughout the S5 filming and for all the hard work all of you put into this series.”