Trivia / All Creatures Great and Small (1978)

• Ability over Appearance: Peter Davison (tall and fair-haired) bears little resemblance to Tristan Farnon as described in the books (short and dark-haired). Indeed, when he met Christopher Timothy, the latter's first comment was "Too tall, recast."
• Cast the Runner-Up: Christopher Timothy was originally offered the part of Tristan Farnon, but he said he would only appear if he could play James Herriot.
• The Character Died With Her: Mrs. Hall was said to have died offscreen in the 1983 Christmas special, due to Mary Hignett passing away suddenly just after the end of filming for the third series.
• Enforced Method Acting: All the beer being drunk during the pub scenes was real, even though the many glasses of whisky the characters consumed were just water colored with burnt sugar. Peter Davison was especially displeased with this choice, as he dislikes beer. At one point, filming of one such scene had to be halted so Christopher Timothy could throw up.
• Executive Meddling: BBC executives insisted that Christopher Timothy use a neutral English accent when portraying James Herriot, rather than using Herriot's natural Scottish accent. Likewise, Carol Drinkwater and Lynda Bellingham were told to use neutral accents to portray Yorkshire-born Helen Alderson. Christopher Timothy also came close to losing the part twice due to interference from the higher-ups. First, the executives wanted to cast Herriot themselves and suggested that Timothy be given the role of Tristan Farnon instead. He then nearly lost the part after breaking his leg in a car crash between shoots for the first series; the executives apparently proposed to replace him with Peter Davison and recast Tristan, but producer Bill Sellars refused and instead rewrote the remaining episodes to accommodate Timothy's injuries.
• Hide Your Pregnancy: For the first few episodes of Season 5, Helen was bedridden with a slipped disc to hide Lynda Bellingham's pregnancy.
• I Am Not Spock: For years after the series ended, Christopher Timothy and his agent had to keep reminding casting directors, sometimes loudly, that he was an actor and not a veterinarian.
  • Lynda Bellingham complained that for years she received marriage offers from lonely American farmers who could not differentiate between her real person and her actress.
• Method Acting: Christopher Timothy is on record as stating that most of the procedures shown on camera were actually performed by him, Robert Hardy, and Peter Davison. Timothy himself spent some time accompanying a country vet on his rounds, including going out to emergency calls at 4 AM, to learn how things were done.
• The Other Darrin: Helen is played by Carol Drinkwater for Seasons 1-3 and by Lynda Bellingham for Seasons 4-7.
• Overtook the Manga: The show eventually ran out of book to adapt and began using scripts without any connection to the books.
  • A double case, considering Herriot himself eventually wrote some chapters with little connection to actual cases.
• Production Nickname: The cast and crew referred to this as "All Creatures Grunt and Smell".
• Recycled Script: When the series started running regularly again in 1988, the writers began recycling material from the books/original 1978-1980 run. This usually took the form of one of Siegfried's Hypocritical Humor lectures (e.g., the one about wasting surgical materials) being delivered to Calum rather than James.
• Series Hiatus: The break in the series between 1980 and 1988 wavers between this and Revival.
• Star-Making Role: For Peter Davison.
• What Could Have Been: Michael York was considered for James Herriot in the pilot film. As mentioned above, Christopher Timothy was almost cast as Tristan, but insisted that he wanted the role of Herriot or nothing. After Timothy broke his leg in a car accident, it was proposed by some of the BBC execs that Peter Davison take over as Herriot, with the role of Tristan then being re-cast. The show's producer refused to countenance this idea and rewrote the season's scripts to work around Timothy's injury.
• Written-In Infirmity: During the filming of the second series, Christopher Timothy broke his leg in a car crash. Some of the storylines had to be altered to explain why James Herriot was walking with a limp, or spent most of his time in the surgery rather than going out to farms to treat animals.

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