Review by C.J. Bunce

Update: All Creatures Great and Small has been renewed for not one, but two seasons–5 and 6.  Please subscribe and keep coming back to borg for more coverage of the series in the coming years.

The latest season of PBS Masterpiece’s adaptation of James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small does something that must be quite difficult to maintain.  Like a steady bow across a violinist’s finely tuned string, the series masterfully maintains this perfect balance and tone–for its characters and its story.  It balances an idyllic setting with personal issues of life and death, all as a world war is happening not all that far away.  The series that made it into the borg Top 10 television series of the past decade is back and as brilliant as ever, even without its #1 comic relief: Callum Woodhouse’s Tristan is off at war–but for how long?  It all depends on whether the new writers stick with the novels, the earlier adaptations, or do their own thing.

Read the Edgar Award-winning series inspired by Samuel West’s character Siegfried Farnon on the series here. 

Yes, Herriot’s books are autobiographical, and the TV series is likely more pastoral and tranquil than the gritty realities of the 1930s and 1940s.  But the balance of the calm and the heart-pounding is a big part of why this series works for today’s audience.  Then again, our blood pressures could all probably do just fine to watch the staff at the Darrowby office sit quietly for an evening in front of the fire with no animal maladies or missing family members.

The first episode of Season 4, which aired this past week in the States on PBS (the entire series is available to PBS Passport subscribers) hints at life without Tristan, with Nicholas Ralph back as James and wife Helen again played by Oscar-winner Rachel Shenton–both seem focused on having kids, despite the prospect of a long war ahead.  James helps a young boy and his whippet as Samuel West’s Siegfried gets most of the episode’s drama, engaged at vet work with an old farmer who has lost all of his family, plagued by thoughts of his brother at war. In the upcoming second episode, airing Sunday, Siegfried gets caught up in office angst when he hires a new employee, played by recurring Doctor Who actress Neve McIntosh.

Anna Madeley’s Mrs. Hall has her own side journey–she may or may not be Mrs. Hall for long.  Surprisingly this isn’t a story where Mrs. Hall is the one put off by a newcomer in her work space.  Look for James Anthony-Rose arriving as new doctor Richard Carmody in the third episode airing later this month.

The best current fictional TV drama addressing the value and importance of science and technology is back and as strong as ever.  A fifth season renewal for such a successful, highly watched and highly rated series seems more than likely.

Catch the entire fourth season (that’s fourth “series” in the UK) of All Creatures Great and Small, UK Channel 5’s highest rated drama ever, now on PBS Passport, or enjoy it weekly with new episodes arriving on PBS Masterpiece every Sunday.