'It's like live theatre': Cast of All Creatures Great and Small Season 7 on filming in the Yorkshire Dales

Anna Madeley has some important advice for those about to visit the All Creatures Great and Small studio sets for the first time: “Make sure you go to the pub.”

Ah, the pub. The Drovers, the setting for many a Darrowby drama, not least during the festive finale of season six, when one particular scene caused a stir.

“We finished the previous series with Dorothy coming back into his life,” says Samuel West, who plays Siegfried Farnon in the popular vet drama series, which returns for its seventh season next Thursday, September 17.

“And then kissing at the end of the episode, which seems to make a lot of people quite angry.

“When Dorothy arrives, I think he sees - well, lucky him, you know. A beautiful, tasteful, intelligent, funny woman who likes him comes in and he sees a sign, a possibility of happiness. And who could deny him it?”

About that … those who want to see Siegfried with Mrs Hall would deny him happiness with Dorothy, but we will have to see how it all plays out.

“He's a man who always knows his own mind but very rarely knows his own feelings, and frequently is playing catch-up - particularly sometimes with the audience,” says Sam.

"I’ve always thought of Siegfried and Skeldale House as a sort of friendly octopus, trying to keep the walls together. Alone, sometimes it feels to him, although he overlooks Mrs Hall’s help.”

The “friendly octopus” description is apt, and actually comes from James Herriot’s description in It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet of Skeldale House - “its long tentacles stretched out over the town and deep into the surrounding hills, so that no matter where you went, you were always within its reach. And the driving force, the nerve center at the very heart of the thing, was Siegfried”.

When Samuel gets new scripts for his part in 5’s hugely popular adaptation of All Creatures Great and Small, he looks for a continuing exploration of Siegfried’s true feelings, and the possibility of true happiness - “whatever that means to him”.

He also looks for the big animal stories. “We have two in this series,” he says. One involves a pioneering procedure performed on a cow. “It's from the books and it's really difficult and we think we've got it wrong, and that was an adventure,” he says.

Later on, there is also a horse story. “That's a big episode for me. I always love working with horses. My darling partner, who's a writer and EP on Rivals, was telling me about the Hunt Ball sequence and the polo.”

Both productions use Atkinson Action Horses, based near Goole. “Whenever we've got a day on set with Mark, and indeed Ben, his ridiculously talented son, those are some of the happiest days for me.”

We are sitting in a glass-walled meeting room looking out onto the hubbub of the large main production office at the studios. It has an old-fashioned, pre-pandemic sort of buzz about it, people sitting at desks and screens, chatting, milling about, offering tea, amid lots of paper and photos and files and notices. Lots of comings and goings.

The cast and crew are coming towards the end of this year’s filming season, and there seems to be much still to do, logistics to be discussed, crew members arriving to be dispatched to filming locations. I snuck a look at a screen as I passed through and glimpsed an impressively authentic 1940s poster being created.

This studio, near Harrogate, is also where the interior sets are housed for Skeldale House and for The Drovers – and I was able to take a wander around the main living room, the dining rooms, the treatment rooms and the famous hallway cum waiting room, and the attic bedroom, which is now where Tristan resides.

Stepping inside The Drovers feels just like being inside a proper old Yorkshire pub. Here, as with the other rooms, the attention to detail is exquisite – there was even a 1946 edition of The Yorkshire Post on one of the tables. It all feels very familiar and very real, almost spookily so.

The set of The Drovers is also a favourite for Callum Woodhouse - and a scene shot there for episode one is particularly special. “The Drovers is just magic,” Callum says. “I managed to get my Dad into this series as a supporting artist. And he's in the pub.

“He was texting me the whole week leading up to it, being like, ‘I came up with my character name - he's called Arthur Sugdale’.”

Like Sam, Callum looks for growth for his character, Tristan. “He started off as the sort of comic relief, essentially. I think he's grown into a lot more than that.”

His relationship with Charlotte, played by Gaia Wise, has grown, too. “It's interesting because I think the original plan for Charlotte was for her to just be in the last series.

“Tristan has matured so much since coming back from the war and since his time spent away. I think it just happened really organically.

“It worked for his character in those early seasons where he was a bit mercurial and all over the shop that none of his love interests really lasted longer than a couple of episodes. But that's not him anymore and he is looking for a deeper connection.

“Gaia is absolutely amazing to work with. I think there's a really great chemistry that we share. It was really positive.”

Callum has brought his dog, Lenny, into the interview. “He was in the behind-the-scenes show that we did last year with Graeme Hall,” he says. “So he's been on telly, but he's not allowed to be in the show because they didn't have crossbreeding back then. I've made the argument that Tristan's a bit of a trendsetter. He had the first cock-a-poo in the United Kingdom, but they’re like, ‘no’.”

On returning to film All Creatures, Callum says he probably looks forward most to “joking around with Nick”, adding: “We’ve sort of developed our own language after seven years and the rest of the guys look at us in bafflement sometimes.

"So yeah, hanging out with Nick. Going for meals in Harrogate – it’s a really, really lovely place to stay while filming.”

Series seven opens with James (Nicholas Ralph) and Helen (Rachel Shenton) down in London, where James visits the Royal Veterinary College (look out for Bradford City Hall, looking beautiful) and Helen catches up with her sister, Jenny (Imogen Clawson). “I'm amazed at how grown up she looks in her nurse's outfit and how she's causing mischief already,” says Rachel.

Nicholas points out that there are references to episode one of series one, which was 10 years ago in Darrowby time, after last year’s time leap to reach the end of WWII. “It just shows you the journey that we've been on for the past seven years, and the character coming up for 10 years, so it's a beautiful opening to series seven.”

Rachel loves working with the children, Thomas Riches, who plays little Jimmy, and Isabella Ward, who plays Rosie. “It's like doing live theatre; you just don't know what's going to happen,” she says. “And, of course, they're on limited hours. I kind of like the focus.

“It's very much at the heart of who she is,” she says of Helen. “She loves being on the farm, but she loves being with her family. That's her favourite place.”

Nicholas is delighted that Granville Bennett, played by Caolan McCarthy, has turned up for series seven. “An amazing character from the books. I’ve been saying ‘where's Granville Bennett?’ for years. And he's finally arrived in his flashy sports car and all his money.

“James at the start thinks this guy's all talk and all style, no substance. And then he gets to know him a little bit more as we go across this series and finds out that there's a lot more to the man than meets the eye.

“We even go for a double date, don't we, around their house?” he says to Rachel. “It was another opportunity to go to another stunning part of Yorkshire. We were in Kettlewell filming. We were just looking around like ‘this is incredible’.”

Rachel says: "The actual set that they built for it as well was just beautiful.”

Nicholas adds: “Yeah, he's got a bar in his own house, in his garden. Again, all true to the books.”

Hundreds of fans turned up for filming this year in Grassington, which is used for Darrowby. “It felt like this year there was more than ever,” Rachel says. “There's so many people, and I'm always like, ‘oh my goodness’, because sometimes it's freezing and they sit out all day. That level of commitment is really something.”

Nicholas says: “Again, we've seen people from all over the place, Japan, South Africa, Australia this year.”

He adds that some fans from overseas come over not just to see the actors on location in Grassington and the Yorkshire Dales, but also to see them on stage, for example, to see Samuel West in Twelfth Night at the RSC. One fan asked Samuel to write a line from the play on her arm. "She's going to get a tattoo of it on her arm. In his handwriting,” says Nicholas. “He was like, ‘That's a new one for me’.”

The close and supportive relationship that we see on screen between James and Helen is based on consultation with Jim Wight and Rosie Page, the real little Jimmy and Rosie.

Rachel says: “They said that their mum and dad just had this really pure, impenetrable love, and they were always on each other's teams.

“Within the scripts that's something that we've always fought to protect, and the conflict tends to come from the outside world, not the two of them.

“Their union has been something that really is quite remarkable and stands the test of time. It’s just a privilege to play that; it feels pure and rare.”

Nicholas says: “They would tease one another in a really playful way, so that's something we always try and get that a bit more into the scripts.

“Working with the directors we have, it's always very collaborative and I think just adds to the richness of the show.

“They didn't have pet names for one another, but they would always kiss one another upon leaving and arriving back home from wherever. And that's another thing that we try to always make sure that's in there as well.”

And what of Mrs Hall? Well, series seven finds her in a good place,” says Anna Madeley.

“Dorothy's in town. We're going out and having fun,” she says. “Rationing is still really hard. So that's a big part of Mrs Hall's work with the WI, with Mrs Pumphrey (Patricia Hodge). They're doing a lot of work setting up a community pantry. There’s people vulnerable locally who need a bit of help.

“There’s a lovely story with Maggie (Molly Winnard) about that as well, because she’s obviously lost her husband during the war and she’s a single mum, so that gives you a little window into those worlds in the community.

“You’ve got the small holding farmers, and there’s one … you know, the idea that the old bloke’s probably not cooking himself dinners.”

In last season’s finale, Mrs Hall’s face, on seeing the kiss between Dorothy and Siegfried, was hard to read. A little surprised, a little pleased, a little sad, a little wistful, a little … conflicted, perhaps.

“Looking at the end of that series, I kind of had an inkling of some of the things that were going to come up,” Anna says.

“That's quite an interesting one because they are old mates and I think old mates are quite special, aren't they? You're not doing small talk, and someone knows you evolve. But it's quite an interesting dynamic. There's still a twinkle between them that I think she immediately jumps on the train of going, ‘Oh, I think they still like each other.’

“It's nice to see them happy and I think that sort of dominates the picture. I think it's also quite interesting as you see it go on, seeing, I think, by the end of the series, Mrs Hall will have a slightly different perspective.

“But, you know, slightly being the gooseberry in the middle saying, ‘Actually, maybe it's time you two went out, just the two of you’. But also seeing what he's like dating somebody that close up.”

Some fans might not take well to seeing Siegfried with Dorothy. “I think it’s going to be quite challenging,” Anna says. “The sort of die-hards, I think they might, you know, get quite cross. But I don't know what it'll be in the end.

"It's a lovely question, isn't it, should they, will they? Love comes in many forms.”

But it is never just about Siegfried when it comes to Mrs Hall. Anna says: “I think it's rather lovely that she's had a period of time to just enjoy life post-war and start to find her voice.

“I think it's an interesting time for her where we are going to start to see … what's going to be her next step in life.

"That generation of women who have had their kids, grandchildren. That’s all great and lovely and now what are you going to … you know, when you are community minded and you do want to get stuck in. I hope we’re going to keep moving forwards on that trajectory as well.”

This season, a favourite location for Anna was Hebden, where the WI meetings are filmed. “There's a very lovely tea shop there. A real one,” she says. “We decorated their church hall in Hebden. It's beautiful.

"And then when I was in Grassington, I have a story about the bakery … it’s just off a little alleyway. It was a very cool litle shop that they made into a bakers, which they did a brilliant job of. They do some amazing work on the buildings. The detail that goes into them is amazing.”

All Creatures Great and Small returns to 5 on Thursday, September 17, at 9pm. Catch up with previous series by streaming on 5. See Callum Woodhouse and Lenny in All Creatures Great and Small: Behind the Magic will air at 9pm on Friday, September 18, 2026 on 5.