Sam & Ade Go Birding: ‘These Yorkshire locations are our All Creatures Great and Small bread and butter,’ says Sam West
Actor Samuel West, who plays Siegfried Farnon in 5’s adaptation of All Creatures Great and Small, gives his friend Adrian Edmondson an insight into his life on location in the Yorkshire Dales when they return for a new series of Sam & Ade Go Birding.
When Ade picks up Sam from the studio set of All Creatures, it sets off a weekend of Yorkshire birdwatching that begins with an after-work pint by the river, witnessing swooping swallows, swifts and house martins.
“I wanted to keep that trip local,” says Sam. “We went to Grass Wood, just outside Grassington (our Darrowby in All Creatures) and then we headed up Nidderdale and saw curlews.
“These locations are our All Creatures Great and Small bread and butter. I wanted Adrian to see where I spend my time; it’s an area he also knows well from childhood.”
Like Sam’s father, Ade was born in Bradford. He lived with his family in a variety of places including Cyprus, Bahrain, and Uganda, while his father was a teacher in the British Armed Forces. He attended Pocklington School aged 11 to 18.
The pair have to rise at 3am to experience a true Yorkshire Dales spring dawn chorus of chiffchaffs, warblers, robins, tits and cuckoos.
Later, Sam takes Ade to a farm used as a location in the first series of All Creatures, where they watch a swallow repeatedly return to its nest to feed its chicks. The following morning, they head out to the Yorkshire moors in search of curlews.
“I also have an All Creatures Great and Small red kite story,” says Sam. “In series three there’s a scene - which wasn’t in the script or I would have flagged it - where James goes walking in the Dales and hears a bird.
“I was watching the episode at a screening. I heard the call and apparently said, ‘Oh no.’
“There was a shot of a red kite flying overhead, and the producer turned to me and said, ‘What’s the problem? Isn’t it beautiful?’ ‘Yes, it's gorgeous,’ I said. ‘It’s just the red kite was extinct in Yorkshire in 1938. We’ll get letters. It’s not too late to turn the kite into a buzzard.’ She said it was too late and she’d deal with the letters.”
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For episode three, Sam and Ade travel to the Yorkshire Coast, to Bempton, Flamborough Head, and Bridlington.
“Ade and I were thrilled when 5 said they wanted more,” says Sam. “I told the channel that if they recommissioned us straightaway, we could make three programmes in the spring when a lot of birds are migrating back to Britain. That would make a very different series from filming in the autumn if we went again later.”
Ade says: “We were almost angling for another series as soon as we were making the first.”
Life and mortality continue to be running themes in the new series. “They're naturally occurring, as Sam was coming up to his mum’s memorial, so everything was in the present. It’ll be interesting to see what these next three are about,” says Ade.
Sam & Ade Go Birding airs on 5 on Thursday, October 1, at 7pm, for three hour-long episodes, with another three expected later in the year.