Where We Left Everyone in 'All Creatures Great and Small' Season 1
All Creatures Great and Small returns this Sunday for a second season. The first season, which aired in January of 2021, was a surprise hit for PBS and Masterpiece, bringing mainstream audiences to the Yorkshire Dales the same way Downton Abbey once did for grand houses and posh estates. But the year since the show finished its freshman run has been long and stressful, with pandemic lockdowns coming and going and new variants rising at inconvenient times, bringing stress to everyone's lives.
Fans can be forgiven if it seems like a long time since Season 1. Though it's only been twelve months, fans could use a refresh to resettle their minds into the interwar period far away in the farmlands of the English countryside. So let's run down everything you might have forgotten happened in Season 1.
The series begins with the arrival of James Herriot (Nicholas Ralph), a veterinary surgeon, to the dales of Yorkshire after accepting an offer to work for/apprentice with Siegfried Farnon (Samuel West), owner of Skeldale House and the head veterinary surgeon of the practice. His arrival doesn't seem promising. Farnon is eccentric and gets a kick out of abusing his new employee, though the housekeeper, Mrs. Hall (Anna Madeley), is kindly. Harriot finds himself the butt of jokes for locals, frustrated and unhappy being so far from his home in Scotland and unappreciated by his employer.
