'All Creatures Great and Small': Season 2, Episode 3 Recap

The episode of All Creatures Great and Small opens with a funeral, black-clad mourners following a horse and cart that bears a wooden casket. It looks like all of Darrowby has turned out to pay their respects, and you’ll find yourself anxiously scanning the faces to see who the community has lost. The team from Skeldale House is among the mourners, as is the Alderson family, and I found myself sighing with relief.

We learn who’s been lost very soon, and it’s as bad as it could be. Farmer Billy Dalby’s sudden death leaves his wife, Phyllis (Amy Nuttall), and two little boys alone to cope with the family farm. James makes a condolence call that is also in response to a request to visit their herd of stirks (yearling cattle). He finds Mrs. Dalby in the field, gazing anxiously at her farm’s future. The cows are having respiratory problems caused by a parasite that breeds in the pasture, and then lodges in the bronchial tubes. Because they’re young, they don’t have much resistance.

James delivers the bad news as gently as he can. The only thing that can save them––and it may not save the entire herd––is to take them out of the field and feed them expensive high-protein food as well as the hay that was being saved for the winter. Although this news has come at the worst possible time, and as desperately sad as her situation is, Mrs. Dalby still graciously feeds James tea and homemade biscuits.