INTERVIEW: Cast of ‘All Creatures Great and Small’ talk with Hollywood Soapbox
Photo: Nicholas Ralph stars as veterinarian James Herriot in All Creatures Great and Small. Photo courtesy of PBS / Provided by press rep with permission.
All Creatures Great and Small returns for a second season Sunday, Jan. 9 at 9 p.m. on PBS and the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel. The show follows the adventures of small-town veterinarian James Herriot (Nicholas Ralph) as he works for a practice in 1930s Yorkshire, England. The community members he meets along the way are quirky fun and give him more than a few headaches — and the audience laughs along and is delighted every step of the way.
In addition to Ralph, All Creatures Great and Small features Callum Woodhouse as Tristan, Anna Madeley as Mrs. Hall and Samuel West as Siegfried Farnon. Joining them for the TV project are executive producers Colin Callender and Susanne Simpson, and writer Ben Vanstone. In 2021, the cast and creative team joined a conference call with journalists to talk about the new season of the hit show.
Hollywood Soapbox asked the team members about the TV show’s source material, the original books by Herriot, and whether they read them before signing up for All Creatures Great and Small. Here’s what they had to say…
CALLUM WOODHOUSE: Certainly not before the audition for me. I was quite unfamiliar with it, but then after the audition and the process after that, I read them to get a better sense of Tristan and the journey that I was going to sort of go on with him.
NICHOLAS RALPH: Yeah, I was the same. Before the audition and things, I didn’t come across them, but certainly through the audition period and then doing research for the show, they were by my side the whole way. Obviously you take a lot from the books and then also the scripts, Ben’s wonderful scripts when building a character, and you kind of merge those all together. But, yeah, the books were never far away. I also did them in the audiobooks, so I know them back to front, inside out. I’m ready to move on now to the next few.
COLIN CALLENDER: Anna, what was interesting for you was that Mrs. Hall is not fully developed in the books, and Ben really worked on Mrs. Hall. So your character, you were part of that invention or that creation.
ANNA MADELEY: Yeah, it was really exciting. In the scripts themselves was where all my clues were, but reading the books is great in terms of getting the community and the sense of all the other characters and their journeys and what was going on, and being able to realize what was great about the backstory for Mrs. Hall, that it worked in that world. It could bear so much fruit, so it marries up with it really usefully. And along with that, I did have that surrogate family, so I still refer to them, absolutely, in terms of what are the stories, what are the roles women played in that community, what are the ideas we could have in the future coming out of it. And it was also just a lovely read to keep dipping into, keep your toe in the tone of them. They are just gorgeous and heartwarming. Keeping that world alive while you’re shooting is just great.
SAMUEL WEST: I just always feel we have to give a big plug to America at this point because … they were published in Britain and didn’t do very well. It wasn’t until the early combined volumes came out in the ’70s, and it was a big hit in America. And then they took off in Britain, so the reason we are doing this at all is because of America. They were always loo books in my house because each chapter can be read by a visit to the bathroom. That makes them sound like they are funny. Of course they are funny, but they are beautifully written and textured. I think what’s lovely about Ben’s script and actually the arc of the series is it gets that texture in as a weave, not as an embroidery. It is the basis of it.
CALLENDER: The other shoutout I wanted to give was to Ben because the other joy of working on the show is Ben and how Ben has actually taken the books and been very reverential to the books and respectful of the books, but has actually managed to sort of evolve each character’s backstory and the psychological underpinning of every character, and give them a reality that is really palpable and has found the magic and the joy in the small moments between the characters as well as the bigger story arcs. But it is part of … Ben’s own humor and his own sort of observational sense that I think has made the show successful. He just captures these tiny moments between characters where their real selves are revealed in tiny acts of kindness.
SUSANNE SIMPSON: I know our audience, the American audience, who of course loved the first television series, but I think this is beginning to supersede that. And I think what Colin just said about Ben and the way that you pick up on those small moments and the relationships among the characters, it is wonderful to watch, and our audience is loving it, really loving it.
CALLENDER: There was a moment in the seventh episode of the last season, the Christmas episode in the church on Christmas Eve when Anna’s character, Mrs. Hall, is upset because her son hasn’t come back, and Siegfried stands beside her and puts his hand on her hand in an act of friendship. In that tiny moment it is as powerful and as moving as anything you will see at any time. That’s Ben at work. That’s Ben Vanstone’s magic as a writer. It’s beautiful work.
BEN VANSTONE: It has always been our intention … we always say small is really big with this show. I think that whenever you feel like you’re trying too hard in a moment, you are overselling it. Actually, these tiny little moments are far more relatable. We don’t always have the huge, dramatic arguments and calamities every day in our own lives. It’s those little things that we do for each other that matter. That’s our intention with the show.
WEST: I think one of the things about coming out during lockdown as well, because everybody’s world has shrunk, is if you are making a story about a family who have one cow rather than 500, like most farmers do now, then the loss of it is a tragedy. And if it dies in calf-birth, that’s enough of a story to send your first episode around, and then when it doesn’t, it’s fantastic. Actually, sort of shrinking your viewfinder until that fills the frame is enough.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
All Creatures Great and Small returns Sunday, Jan. 9 at 9 p.m. on PBS and on the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel. Click here for more information.
