All Creatures Great & Small (S4)

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Edited 1 March 2025: Each individual post for season 4 has been compiled into the comments on this post. I'm aware it may seem strange to everyone else, but I didn't like having this season being the only one where each episode got a post.

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S4E1: Broodiness

Aired 7 Jan but seen on 15 Jan 2024. Telly Visions recap.

Easter 1940. I don't know why the one farm 'high in the dales' still has snow on the ground, but I'm not going to pretend I'm a weather historian. [Okay, I did try to look it up, but I keep getting weather updates relating to fighting in continental Europe, so I'd have to figure out a better way to go about searching for this.]

There's already the start of "will James and Helen have any kids" questioning, and the only tolerable part is that it's James and Helen talking to each other about this instead of having everyone else drop hints.

While the story line concerning Wesley Banks and his greyhound Duke was important, I was personally more intrigued by Mrs Hall's start to this season. (Duke gets treated for distemper, James learns not to judge a poor person too quickly (as Wesley was feeding his dog his own food and keeping his bed as clean as possible), and Wesley isn't as rude and nasty as his first impression when someone doesn't automatically assume the worst of him. He'll probably thrive on Clifford's farm, which is where James takes him at the end of the episode [since Clifford is newly widowed, his farm hands have gone off to fight, etc.].)

Back to Mrs Hall. She goes off to the county official-building-place where she can request papers to file for a divorce. She needs to provide a reason [desertion], and she needs to provide evidence for that via an official statement with any letters, photographs, etc. that could support her claim. We briefly get to see her write "the winter of 1918" while covering Robert Hall's service in WWI, but it's also clear that this isn't simple and easy for her to do. Although, because of this, I did find out that The Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Act (2020) introduced no-fault divorce reforms [in England and Wales] and went into effect in April 2022.

Tristan and Edward: Both still alive with photographs in their military uniforms put out on shelves (Siegfried's study and the desk Mrs Hall uses). It takes a bit for Siegfried to write a letter to Tristan in this episode, who drew a caricature of an officer with heart patterned pants clearly visible in his letter, but he does settle down to do so while Mrs Hall and Gerald go to Easter service. (Since Lent has officially ended by that point, it's also the end of his kind of irritable and very skulking about looking for where his tobacco was hidden stage of 'giving up tobacco for Lent'.)

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S4E2: Carpe Diem

Aired and seen on 15 Jan 2024. Telly Visions recap.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the news before the film that Mrs Hall and Gerald go to see was supposed to provide a rough date (or reference point for 1940 war specifics).

Siegfried's not so neat, tidy, and organized ways have been resurrected in force for this episode. (Though some of the tasks like balancing the books were previously Tristan's duties.) He hired a receptionist he met at a recent dance, and Miss Harbottle's used to a merchant setting in a city. The pro is that she's extremely organized, but the con is that she's not big on being too close to animals or willing to adapt to the situational bartering in this rural area ('how am I supposed to enter rhubarb jam in the ledger?').

It's a specific point of contention that she does not like Siegfried's rat who has his wicker cage in the study, which is where Miss Harbottle wants to set up shop. Siegfried's final straw is when she puts Vonolel out in the small barn area where recovering patients are lodged. James hits his breaking point earlier when her insistence on a half crown deposit when booking an appointment drives away a man, first seen in The Drovers. Joe Coney has a ferret who he earns a bit of money from ferret roulette with (the ferret navigates a holey coat and people put down some change where they think he'll come out), but he only has a [dead] rabbit as his payment and can't afford the half crown deposit.

[Joe has this whole bit with Miss Harbottle about Coney not being his real surname, but when I tried looking up a transcript, I got "Di Gervanacum" which isn't what I remember. However, I have misheard unfamiliar names on this show before, so it could be possible.]

Siegfried fails in his goal of having a discussion about firing her on the first try, but everyone agrees that she'd be better off elsewhere. They work together to get Joe to bring his ferret back at the end of day for surgery to identify and remove the mysterious lump, and Miss Harbottle forgets to grab the stack of outgoing invoices for the post because she was waiting for Siegfried (to probably answer some of those questions on the pink slips of paper). Things go alright with the ferret's surgery, though the lump turned out to be a mass. Miss Harbottle is upset that she finds everyone celebrating a surgery after hours, and she preserves her dignity by resigning.

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S4E3: Right Hand Man.

Aired and seen on 21 Jan 2024. Telly Visions recap.

We're in lambing season, so James and Helen are both tired from late night farm visits to help with said lambing. James hopes that bringing on a new veterinary student, Richard Carmody, will help distribute some of the vet tasks. (While he and Helen would like to have a child, they very much would just like to sleep in this episode.)

Initially, Siegfried is unhappy that Mrs Hall made up Tristan's old room for Richard to sleep in, so he asks her to find somewhere else for Richard to board. It takes a bit for Richard to arrive - he gets from London to Darrowby alright enough, but supposedly to keep a potential invading army from getting around, all signs within Darrowby have been removed, and Richard gets a bit lost while trying to find Skeldale House.

Richard is sent into the exam room to help James see to a dog that Mrs Pumphrey is dogsitting while his owner is off at training. (Or it's possible he's already off fighting in the war. The main point is that he is currently away.) The dog is named Cedric, and he looks like a mostly white boxer, if I'm remembering my dog breeds. He's very energetic and has noxious gas, but knowing Mrs Pumphrey's past diets with Tricki Woo, James suggests diet alterations and a bit of charcoal to help neutralize gut things.

Mrs Pumphrey is having a party soon, and she decides to move it outdoors to keep guests from being overwhelmed by Cedric. Richard suggests just keeping Cedric outside, and we're mostly getting a "book smart but doesn't get along well with people" vibe from him. After this exam, Siegfried is a bit insulting about standards at university falling, but Richard defends himself successfully about how he got a bit lost but wasn't as late as Siegfried assumed. (It was mostly to establish that Richard doesn't turn into a doormat when push comes to shove, and that is important when it comes to Siegfried.)

Siegfried hears some news that's not great about France on the radio, but I must admit that I'm not well-versed with WWII history enough to get a sense of a specific battle or date from that snippet. Mrs Hall does distract him by sending him off on a farm call to the Chapmans with Richard, since he wants to specialize in horses. [Reminder: We met Ann Chapman in the Xmas special where James and Helen went out to the farm to help with a puppy delivery; she talked about following your heart while briefly touching on being Black in an interracial marriage in a very white, rural area. Her grandson Tom was one of the first Darrowby men to sign up to enlist.]

Teasel has the heaves, which sounds like an annoyance that can eventually be fixed. Mostly the visit out to the Chapman farm is another chance to see the soldiers running and leaving a gate open, which Siegfried scolds them for. Ann and her daughter have a group, like, right next door in a manner of speaking, and they're not super thrilled about men in lines running about a lot. While it's an unavoidable aspect of training, they're just not as considerate as typical farmer neighbors who take gate checking a bit more seriously.

Mrs Hall and Gerald go on a walk with their dogs and talk, and Mrs Hall brings up that she's sent off the divorce papers. She's been meaning to have this discussion but has stopped herself until now, so Gerald was worried they were gearing up for a 'this relationship needs to end' sort of discussion. Overall, Gerald is very supportive of her and not acting judgemental about the divorce. I think they make plans to meet at Mrs Pumphrey's party which is the next day, which is where he's a bit upset that Siegfried and others knew about the divorce before him. They talk things out and kiss and it's okay. The day before the party, James visits Mrs Pumphrey and falls asleep on the couch for a bit. He thinks Cedric needs more exercise, but he's not terribly worried about how much energy he seems to have. (You know, Tricki Woo is almost always shown just sitting on a pillow, so it's possible that Cedric is just a more active dog.)

The day of the party: James couldn't not go at all, but he agreed with Helen that they could try to leave as early as possible and maybe have some alone time in Skeldale House. Richard thinks James is going about Cedric's treatment all wrong, and James can't help but get sucked into a heated conversation with Richard and Siegfried about this (which may or may not be influenced by Siegfried warming up to Richard over horses and Latin jokes). Helen doesn't like she's apparently been sidelined for a gassy dog and an almost argument, and she gets miffed enough to leave on her own. Mrs Pumphrey offers James her fancy looking tea cup, which actually has some gin in it instead of tea, and he admits that he made a mistake with Helen and needs to leave.

A group of the soldier running from one farm to the next accidentally leaves the Chapman's gate open, and Teasel races away from the farm. On the drive home, James finds her with part of the wooden fence impaled in her chest. [Of course! What did we expect from a horse!] He goes back to Mrs Pumphrey's party to get Richard and Siegfried because they potentially need to do emergency surgery. He finds Helen, who had walked off just enough to calm down but wasn't back at Skeldale House, but he obviously needs to go. She's with everyone there experiencing Cedric trying to devour a cake, but she also talks to Mrs Pumphrey about his nervousness and energy being a sign of separation anxiety. Once Mrs Pumphrey finds the blanket Cedric's owner left for him, he settles down perfectly calmly. (We also get a conversation about the late Mr Pumphrey and how Helen should forgive James for relatively small things.)

Back to Teasel. Siegfried and James are a great deal calmer and lead Richard through what to think about. The heaves - which are a lung thing - makes this into a bit of an atypical case, and Richard stumbles a bit when he's stuck on the proper procedure being to give some sort of anesthesia which can't be done this time. However, the bit of wood didn't hit anything major. They need to cut it away from the fence, clean out the wound, and Teasel should wind up being fine. This does prompt Siegfried to talk to one of the soldiers who showed up at the party, and he really realizes that the gates haven't been kept up as well as usual because a lot of farm hands and sons have enlisted. (He gets some other soldiers to stop by Ann's farm to help fix the gate.)

We end back at Skeldale House where James and Helen talk and mostly collapse on the couch, too tired to move. At this rate, they might never get around to having a baby, but Helen realizes that she's been unusually tired as a potential sign of pregnancy. (Confirmed by checking her notebook with her last menstrual cycle noted.)

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S4E4: By The Book.

Aired and seen on 28 Jan 2024. Telly Visions recap.

Due to weather alerts breaking in, I didn't really hear the name suggestions that James offered up at the very beginning. (It was more of a humorous moment, and he wasn't 100% set on a Scottish name.) Anyways, Helen's not interested in putting her feet up or telling everyone because she's a farmer and there's still plenty of farm work to be done.

I'm not really sure how long it's been between the last episode and this one. Helen has been a bit nauseous in the mornings, and she's having cravings for pickled eggs, which is how Mrs Hall figures out that it's not just indigestion. Helen says it's still early, but she's due around Christmas. Later in the episode, we hear the news of France's surrender to Germany, which happened around the 25th of June.

The main case is out on the Crabtree farm. Mr Crabtree was deemed medically unfit to enlist, so he's trying to make a go at farming without family knowledge or a lot of prior experience. Him and his wife didn't quarantine a new cow, and she's got brucellosis. Her sick calf is very likely to die, and if this spreads to the rest of the herd, it could wipe out everyone which James recognizes as devastating. Richard gives overly technical and jargon heavy answers to the Crabtrees and calls not quarantining a "school boy's mistake", so he's very offputting to them. Instead of him slipping and falling into manture being just a silly mistake, Mr Crabtree says something about how that'll teach him to keep his gob shut.

Siegfried is unhappy that Richard belittled the Crabtrees and didn't make an effort to make sure they understood what he was saying. [Previously, we had an episode with an illiterate farmer and Helen's sister left school as soon she could to help with the farm.] He takes away all the reference books that Richard keeps using and has Mrs Hall pretend to be an owner, so Richard can get some practice asking questions, being personable, and improving his communication. A real case comes in: Ned Clough [pronounced cluff] has Bernard, the tortoise. He's mysteriously itchy and not eating, so Richard tries a diet change and sends some cuttlefish home. [Mr Clough's assessment of Richard to Seigfried is that "he's got a broom up his backside but he knows his stuff". Memorable enough line to be in the Telly Vision recap.]

James and Helen go out to the Crabtree farm after the sick calf dies. James finds that one of the other pregnant cows has gone into premature labor, and she delivers a stillborn calf. Helen helps a bit with practical farming advice and reveals that neighbors who keep dropping by are a sign of people being interested in helping, even if they don't come across as being welcoming or helpful in the moment. When James and Helen go back to Skeldale House, Richard is caught up in some reading he was doing. [While he can't consult his books for Bernard's case, he's been doing some further reading on brucellosis after being removed from that one.]

Richard's more focused on it as a theoretical, but he's got some paper on brucellosis being zoonotic, which means it can transfer between animals [and do the animal-human jump]. There's a supposedly small study about humans that have caught brucellosis and three-fourths of the pregnant women miscarried. James and Helen are both upset, and it's a very loud, nearly argumentative, way to announce to the rest of Skeldale House that Helen is pregnant. Personally, I wasn't very interested in this tactic while watching, but I can understand the narrative goal - and potentially another reminder of how important antibiotics are.

Siegfried gets all of Richard's reference books out, and the whole of Skeldale House tries to read whatever may be helpful about brucellosis. They realize that a test used for typhoid in cows could also reveal whether Helen is positive for brucellosis, so they send that blood off to the lab. In the meantime, she's on strict bed rest because they don't really have an option for treatment. It's supposed to be this whole high tension thing, and I'm not going to drag it out: Helen is negative.

For anyone who's not already aware:

The disease is also considered an occupational hazard for people who work in the livestock sector. People who work with animals and are in contact with blood, placenta, foetuses and uterine secretions have an increased risk of contracting the disease. This method of transmission primarily affects farmers, butchers, hunters, veterinarians and laboratory personnel. - World Health Organization.

Helen mostly realizes that putting her feet up once in a while isn't half bad. During the wait before the test results arrive, she calls around to farmers and gets anyone who can spare some time to go help Siegfried and James to disinfect the Crabtree's barn. The Crabtrees don't lose their entire herd or all of the expected calves, but they've had just enough losses that they'll some need supplemental income. Mr Crabtree takes on a farm hand job on Ann Chapman's farm in order to get some more farming experience which should mean they'll do better the next year.

Richard figures out that Mr Clough has fleas, and he's accidentally given them to Bernard. (In the process, Richard acquires them as well and has to get himself treated too.) My family initially thought Mr Clough wouldn't take this news very well, but he was more surprised than offended. He'd been itching and worried about an allergy to something, but he hadn't yet found enough evidence of fleas to put it together. (The fleas jumping off Bernard in the pie pan of water was visually striking and easy to see.)

Also, Mrs Hall receives a letter that Robert isn't contesting the divorce or anything like that. I'm not sure if she's instantly now divorced or if there's some other step like waiting a certain number of days.

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S4E5: Papers.

Aired and seen on 4 Feb 2024. Telly Visions recap.

Well, it's the last two days that James has before he has to report to wherever for training because he's gotten his papers that he's been called into the Royal Air Force. (There's a slight possibility I should be able to figure out where "five counties away" is, exactly, but I imagine we'll find out more in the next episode.) The bit with Churchill on the radio identified the Battle of Britain, according to the Telly Visions recap, which began on the 10th of July [1940].

James' method of coping with this development is trying to get everything in the practice ready for him to step away. He tries to teach Richard how to drive, he's got everything ordered and sorted for however long, and he tries to convince Siegfried to keep Richard on. (A later heart-to-heart conversation will include 'it's alright to be scared', but he never actually says that. James admits to feeling a certain amount of guilt and regret for signing up now that he's going to be leaving his pregnant wife alone.)

James and Richard go to see Mrs Pumphrey because Tricki Woo has some sort of rash. Maybe a grass or pollen allergy? Or according to Mrs Pumphrey, Tricki Woo is anxious because Uncle Herriot will be leaving. She insists that Uncle Farnon will be the only veterinarian that Tricki sees while James is away, but tactfully, she only relays this to James instead of telling Richard outright. (The next day, Siegfried and Richard stop by and Siegfried is very blunt that he can't handle all of his cases alone with both Tristan and James gone. He also corrects her on getting Richard's last name wrong, apparently the entire time he's been here. She does warm up enough to Richard that she makes an offhand comment about trying a new shampoo, which is the answer to the rash, but I don't think he's gotten to Uncle Carmody status yet.)

Back to the day before, Audrey and Gerald meet up for tea. He's apparently just got back from visiting his sister. (In the Lake District, according to the Telly Visions recap. It's northwest from the Yorkshire area and just a long enough drive to not want to travel that every day.) Gerald's sister is sicker than he originally thought, so he's going to go back and live with her [greatly implied: until she dies]. I think Audrey is technically still waiting for her final divorce papers to come in the mail, but she's basically legally no longer married. Going to Gerald's house for tea is important, and she freaks out a bit when she realizes she's still wearing her wedding ring. (The idea of Gerald leaving isn't great, but it's not happening so soon that she won't be able to visit him again.)

We also get to see James slowly losing his patience with Richard in an attempt to drive the car we usually see James in. I'm not a car person, let alone a historical car person, but James is usually in the black one with a top. Siegfried is in the green one that I'm pretty sure doesn't have a top and sort of looks a smidge fancier. As someone who has had years of driving related anxiety, I personally didn't find all the driving lessons with Richard in this episode quite as funny as the average viewer possibly did. I guess him reading about driving a clutch and struggling in practice was part of his 'reads too much' thing???

Anyways, the next day, Siegfried takes Richard out in his [green] car, and he tries to do some sort of speed with confidence bit and car chicken [the roads shown are often single lane]. The other car turns out to be Mrs Pumphrey in her weekend car [driven by Francois], and she is not impressed by Richard's lack of driving skills. Francois finds an injured cat on the side of the road, and Richard is greatly afraid of having hit it while running off the road. The picnic that Helen had been planning to have with James on his last day at home is put on hold while Siegfried and him look over the cat.

It's determined that he was injured in some other way than being hit by either of the cars, and there's a very real possibility that euthanasia would be kinder. However, Helen doesn't want to give up on him and volunteers to do the post-surgery care, so they save the light grey and black tabby now named Oscar. James starts out helping, but he does have a discussion with Siegfried that prompts him to invite Richard in. (What will happen the next time a surgery needs two vets?) James and Helen have their picnic upstairs in their room while Oscar recovers, which includes a hear-to-heart conversation about him leaving tomorrow.

Siegfried takes Richard out to check on Tricki Woo, the bluntly honest conversation happens with Mrs Pumphrey, she agrees to stop the new shampoo, and she decides to help Richard out with his driving. Her and Francois get in the back of the Rolls Royce [weekend car], Tricki Woo sits shotgun, and Richard is to drive them around for an afternoon drive in the Yorkshire dales. She doesn't want him to speed or fake confidence ["you don't have to be good, you just need to be a safe driver"], but he needs something to distract him in just the right way. Mrs Pumphrey instructs Richard to talk to Tricki, and he narrates what they drive past. (Obviously, this helps. It's possible this has magically fixed Richard's driving anxiety, but some of what he'll need is just practice with a clutch.)

Follow up on Gerald: Audrey doesn't want their relationship to end just because Gerald's going away for an unknown amount of time. She's not going to leave that very day, but I think when the final divorce papers come, she'll leave Skeldale House and join him at his sister's place. (Obviously, this will mean tension about how and/or when she breaks the news to Siegfried in the next episode.) Gerald brings up engagement, but I think they're officially waiting for those divorce papers.

That night, James has trouble falling asleep, and he goes down to find Siegfried up and drinking. (I think it might be a bottle of whiskey we've seen in a past season.) They remember some of James' early days at Skeldale House with more lightheartedness than earlier in the day; Siegfried doesn't seem to be charging ahead while acting fine, and James doesn't have to bring up that he technically was fired in his first 24 hours there to convince Siegfried to keep Richard on. Siegfried is silent in a way that suggests he's remembering going off in The Great War. I'm not sure if he also brings up that 'it's alright if James feels xyz', but James does ask him how his wife handled being at home. "Don't worry, James, we'll take care of her [Helen]" is enough of an answer that they finish the bottle.

The morning has goodbyes. Richard says goodbye before going off on a farm call (and honks and waves as the bus goes by). Helen can't handle going to the bus stop itself, so she says goodbye in their room upstairs (and finds a carved aeroplane to hang up in a box underneath the bed). Audrey and Siegfried go to the bus stop with him, and there's a voice over from James of a poem that he shared with Helen earlier in the show as he looks at a photo of them on their wedding day and waves [as the bus pulls away]: A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns.

(This is just the last two stanzas.)

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun;
I will love thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only luve!
And fare thee weel awhile!
And I will come again, my luve,
Though it were ten thousand mile.

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S4E6: The Home Front

Aired and seen on 11 Feb 2024. Telly Visions recap.

James is way off southwest in Devon [still in England]; it's about four and a half hours via modern car estimation and, y'know, down next to Cornwall. It's the first time in the show that we don't see James in an episode, but Helen passes on that he's still in the drills and training stage of the RAF (and hasn't flown yet).

Oscar is cuddly, but Helen is a bit lonely in Skeldale House. Mrs Hall recommends visiting her family, and when Helen finds out that her father twisted his knee a bit in a gopher hole, she jumps on the chance to move back home and help out. However, Mr Alderson doesn't want her to exert herself too much - by fixing the fence or using the wheelbarrow - and lets her check in on a calf that's not interested in eating.

Siegfried is a bit annoyed by a leaking tap in the kitchen, but he's definitely more focused on it (and grumpy) after Mrs Hall gives notice about her leaving. She's not exactly super confident and actually had to do most of the explaining in a letter for Mr Farnon to read; she also postponed until after Helen had gone back to the Alderson farm and Gerald had asked about it. [In another visit to Gerald's. During their chess match, Rocky the dog had a limp and Mrs Hall tells Gerald to bring him by Skeldale House for his suspiciously large testicle.]

With Siegfried being more grumpy with Richard than usual, he gets sent off to the Alderson farm to check on the calf. Siegfried has a whole visit with Gerald about Rocky that also doubles as releasing some tension about Mrs Hall leaving. It wasn't an outright argument, but I did wonder if Gerald needed some time to think about Rocky needing surgery because he just needed some space away from the tension in there. (Rocky has a tumor in his testicle, so this can't be put off for too long.)

It turns out the calf ate way too many apples at once and needs surgery to sort of unblock all of them, and Richard is kind of afraid of pissing off Siegfried by asking for him to come out to the farm. Mr Alderson is also sort of taking out some of his frustration on a 'book smart but stupid' veterinary student, so this is very much a high tension visit for Richard. Anyways, the calf knocks into Mr Alderson and Helen, so we can have stress about how she fell and can't feel the baby moving in the next day or so. [Siegfried will offer his stethoscope, so she can hear the heartbeat, and we will eventually get Siegfried out to the Alderson farm to help Richard with the surgery to remove the apple blockage.]

Mr Alderson's simmering tension will reach a boil, and his apology to Helen after yelling at her will be when we finally find out why he's been so gruff and treating her like she's fragile [regarding farmwork]. Apparently, Helen's mother lost a baby before they had her known younger sister, and he's been more or less blaming himself for not making Mrs Alderson take it easy on the strenuous labor of farmwork because she worked up until losing the baby. (It's not that he's been gruff the whole time because of this; it's more that Helen being pregnant is bringing out this old uncertainty around that.) Helen still stays at Skeldale House after the apology [she went back after the yelling scene], but they do work through that moment. It felt more like a nod to pregnancy bringing up old fears and quasi-superstitions about what can affect it - possibly more noticeable looking back at that time period - than an insurmountable obstacle for the family.

Back to Mrs Hall and Gerald: Mrs Hall is very uncertain about leaving Skeldale House, and even though Siegfried finally reads her letter and stops acting quite so frustrated towards others about the idea of her leaving, she decides that she wants to stay on instead of letting him place an ad for a replacement. I'm honestly not sure why this is such a hard line in the sand for Gerald, but instead of having a long-distance relationship, he ends their engagement and relationship entirely. (I suspect something outside the narrative is affecting this - the actor is leaving, the writers are struggling with this relationship, the writers want to pivot to having Mrs Hall with someone else, something.)

Also: Gerald does bring Rocky back for the surgery, and while waiting, he fixes the leaky tap. It feels like a call back to how he fixed the grandfather clock when he first met Mrs Hall, especially since she has a line about how the clock still keeps perfect time in this episode. Siegfried is much more polite/professional during this visit, and Rocky should be fine.