PBS show returns with even more creatures

‘All Creatures Great and Small’ debuted its seven-episode second season, set in 1938, this week

RIPON, ENGLAND Samuel West was limping.

“A cow stood on my foot,” he said. “Again!”

Errant hooves are among the occupational hazards on the set of “All Creatures Great and Small,” the pastoral series that unfolds in 1930s Yorkshire. But on an intermittently sunny day here in late June, they presented a particular problem for West, who plays veterinary surgeon Siegfried Farnon and was preparing to shoot a cricket sequence.

He gazed at the verdant pitch, the extras miming with bats and ball as the crew set up the shot. “I am not sure how convincing I am going to be in this scene,” he said.

Then West perked up. “Here comes the real star of the show,” he said excitedly. Patricia Hodge, who plays wealthy Mrs. Pumphrey (taking over from Diana Rigg, who died in September), arrived bearing Derek, an extravagantly fluffy Pekingese known as Tricki Woo in the show.

“I’m going to run my lines with Derek,” said Callum Woodhouse, who plays Siegfried’s younger brother, Tristan. Hodge replied: “He is very busy, darling.”

The cricket match, set in the fictional Yorkshire village of Darrowby, takes place late in the seven-part second season, which debuts Sunday on “Masterpiece” on PBS.

And as in the first season of “All Creatures,” a cheerful, optimistic tone prevails despite the distant rumblings of war. (It is now 1938 in the story.)

When the first season aired in Britain in September 2020, that tone proved just right for a pandemic-stressed nation. “All Creatures” drew over four million viewers per episode and was Channel 5’s highest-rated show since 2016.

When it arrived in North America in January 2021, days after the Jan. 6 riot on Capitol Hill, the response was similar.

Season 2 arrives during yet another coronavirus spike and amid similarly profound political division. But will it get the same grateful reaction now that we are no longer in lockdown and are (perhaps) more accustomed to the vicissitudes of pandemic life?

“I think the response will be even stronger this time because no one, a year ago, expected that we would still be dealing with this in such a brutal way,” said Colin Callender, whose company, Playground, produced the series. “It will once again be an enormous escape from the trials and tribulations we are dealing with every day.”

The British response to Season 2 suggests Callender is correct. “A balm for the soul,” Anita Singh wrote in the Telegraph. “Its winning formula looks even more charming,” Stuart Heritage wrote in the Guardian.

The show is based on the bestselling books by James Herriot (whose real name was James Alfred Wight), who moved from Scotland to the Yorkshire Dales in 1937 to work in a rural veterinary practice. His placid, charming stories recount, with wry humour and perception, the triumphs and disappointments of daily life in tiny villages and on small farms. By the time Wight died in 1995, his seven books had sold more than 60 million copies and inspired a hit television adaptation and two movies.

Ben Vanstone, lead writer on “All Creatures,” said he had tried to capture the “real heart and warmth and humanity” of Herriot’s writing. The new season retains the unhurried pace of the first, in which young James Herriot (Nicholas Ralph) comes from Glasgow to join Siegfried Farnon’s veterinary practice. He lives and works in the older vet’s home, called Skeldale House, along with Tristan and the housekeeper, Mrs. Hall (Anna Madeley). And early on, James falls for Helen Alderson (Rachel Shenton), a farmer’s daughter who is inconveniently engaged to an eligible landowner (played by Matthew Lewis).

“Season 2 is about the next step in James’ life,” Vanstone said in a video interview.

“He has to make a choice about where he wants to be; it’s not just a love story between Helen and James, but between James and the Yorkshire Dales.”

In a recent telephone interview, Ralph, a Scot in real life, said the new season finds James “growing into himself and much more assertive about moving the practice forward with the times.” Like his character, he added, he now felt much more confident about the job.

The show is based on the bestselling books by James Herriot, who moved from Scotland to the Yorkshire Dales in 1937 to work in a rural veterinary practice