All Creatures Great and Small (1978 TV series)

All Creatures Great and Small
Cast of All Creatures Great and Small, circa 1978: Christopher Timothy, Robert Hardy, Peter Davison, Mary Hignett and Carol Drinkwater
Genre	Comedy drama
Created by	Bill Sellars
Based on	If Only They Could Talk and It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet by James Herriot
Written by	Johnny Byrne Ted Rhodes
Starring	Christopher Timothy Robert Hardy Peter Davison Carol Drinkwater Mary Hignett John McGlynn Margaretta Scott Lynda Bellingham (list of characters)
Theme music composer	Johnny Pearson
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language	English
No. of series	7
No. of episodes	90 (list of episodes)
Production
Producer	Bill Sellars
Production location	Yorkshire Dales
Running time	48 minutes
Original release
Network	BBC1
Release	8 January 1978 (1978-01-08) – 24 December 1990 (1990-12-24)
Infobox instructions (only shown in preview)

All Creatures Great and Small is a British television series made by the BBC and based on the books of the British veterinary surgeon Alf Wight, who wrote under the pseudonym James Herriot. Set in the Yorkshire Dales and beginning in the mid-1930s, it stars Christopher Timothy as Herriot, Robert Hardy as Siegfried Farnon (based on Donald Sinclair), the proprietor of the Skeldale House surgery, and Peter Davison as Siegfried's "little brother", Tristan (based on Brian Sinclair). Herriot's wife, Helen (based on Joan Wight), was initially played by Carol Drinkwater and in the later series by Lynda Bellingham.

The series had two runs: the original (1978 to 1980, based directly on Herriot's books) was for three series; the second (1988 to 1990, filmed with original scripts but generally regarded as a continuation of the 1978 series) for four. The supporting cast, both recurring and one-offs, numbers over 600, most of whom appear as farmers or clients of the surgery. The series was produced throughout its run by Bill Sellars, who was tasked in early 1977 by the BBC with the creation of a television series from Herriot's first two novels, If Only They Could Talk (1970) and It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet (1972), using the title of the 1975 film adaptation. It is part of a series of movies and television series based on Herriot's novels. The novels were written in an episodic style, with each chapter generally containing a short story within the ongoing narrative of Herriot's life. This format greatly facilitated their adaptation for a television series.

In 2020, a remake, also titled All Creatures Great and Small, was produced by Playground Entertainment for Channel 5 in the United Kingdom and PBS in the United States.^[1]