Let’s be honest for a moment: life has been easier. Things feel out of balance, loud and overwhelming. It’s no surprise that more and more people are turning to feel-good television to find the kind of comfort the real world often fails to provide. Yet despite its growing popularity and its very real impact on people’s emotional wellbeing, the genre remains gravely underrated.
Comfort Doesn’t Come Easy
In particular, critics and award bodies seem to have the persistent belief that stories rooted in suffering and darkness are fundamentally more complex and worthy, while shows that aim to evoke joy and warmth are sometimes dismissed as simplistic or less demanding. This mindset, however, misses something rather important: Moving an audience to tears through beauty, kindness, and humanity is significantly more difficult than evoking strong emotions by continuously subjecting beloved characters to unspeakable trauma and grief.
Making your viewers smile through their tears, creating genuine joy within them – of the kind that makes their belly and chest grow warm – is a different calibre entirely. All Creatures Great and Small does this consistently, moving its viewers with moments of beauty and tenderness. It blends humour with emotional depth in a way that feels natural, almost effortless. However, that apparent simplicity is deceptive. What comes across as easy is the result of an extraordinary amount of highly coordinated work, something that becomes clear when you look behind the scenes and watch how the show is made.
All Creatures makes no attempt to make matters easy for itself. The cast and crew not only regularly film with animals but also with children, both of which are considered notoriously unpredictable and come with strict regulations regarding working hours. To make matters even more challenging, many scenes of the beloved Channel 5 series are filmed outdoors in the often-unforgiving weather of the beautiful Yorkshire Dales, which can shift between snow, rain and sudden bursts of sunshine within only a few minutes. If there is one thing the general public gravely underestimates it’s how much hard work, time, detailed planning and patience goes into producing even a single episode of television. In order for the audience to enjoy 40 minutes of quality TV, a large group of people has to work for several weeks, adhering to a strict schedule whilst also remaining flexible enough to deal with the unpredictable, which – you can be assured – will happen.
On Set: Where Precision Meets People
Watching the cast and crew of a TV show film is a rare honour that requires quite a bit of luck and plenty of perseverance. In the case of All Creatures, you will get to enjoy standing outside for hours, breathing in the rich Yorkshire air while likely being attacked by all four seasons at once. However, it is only a small price to pay to watch the cast and crew work their magic, while braving the volatile weather and every other inconvenience that happens to come their way as if it were second nature. They seem prepared for any scenario. I fully believe they wouldn’t even be fazed by a dinosaur invasion, meeting it with merely a shrug: “Well, in this episode, the Skeldale vets will simply have particularly large animals to tend to.”
All people on the set of All Creatures work together seamlessly, like a particularly well-oiled machine that is most definitely not run by AI but by a team of highly skilled individuals who know exactly what their tasks are and how to perform them effectively and with precision. It already starts days before filming even begins when the construction crew gets the set ready, or in this case, carefully dresses the village buildings to authentically reflect the look of the 1940s. They remove or cover up anything that would break the illusion of the time period and transform the exterior of several buildings into charming period shopfronts. The beloved bookshop and café Stripey Badger becomes the greengrocer’s, the cosy Ockerbys’ Coffee House a draper’s shop, and the unique DeWinkel gift shop an enchanting 1940s bookstore. Within just two to three days, the hard-working construction crew transforms parts of the village into the beloved fictional Darrowby, a place that has become synonymous with “home” and “comfort” to so many people around the world.
Once the village is set up, the rest of the crew – camera and sound teams, among many others – move in, followed by the actors, along with hair and makeup artists and the supporting artists. The scene is first rehearsed multiple times to see what works and what still needs adjusting. Once everything is in place, the scene is filmed for the final cut. Even seemingly simple moments are filmed multiple times, each take refining small details, until everything comes together as intended.
One of the scenes I had the pleasure of observing being filmed included the entire All Creatures main cast – a group of exceptional performers who fit together so remarkably well it’s hard to believe they weren’t cast as an already existing ensemble. Samuel West, Anna Madeley, Nicholas Ralph, Rachel Shenton and Callum Woodhouse not only bring their respective roles to life with remarkable skill and a great deal of care and compassion, but also elevate one another, both as characters on screen and as actors. This became immediately evident in the short scene they filmed that day. All five actors were interacting and moving around in front of the iconic Skeldale entryway, each knowing exactly where to stand, how to move, and how to gently guide the child actors (who were absolutely brilliant).
Pictured: Callum Woodhouse, Anna Madeley, Samuel West, Rachel Shenton & Nicholas Ralph 2025 / © Melanie Tönnies
In the moments between takes, everyone seemed to have a blast: Child actor Thomas Riches, who plays little Jimmy with striking confidence, was skipping about, handing out sweets while Sam West, ever the man of many talents, juggled onions he found outside the fake greengrocer’s. And whenever you looked over at Anna Madeley, she was laughing with a fellow cast or crew member, bringing a distinct warmth that lifted the whole atmosphere. Throughout both days of filming, Nicholas Ralph in particular interacted with just about every person watching, making them feel welcome and included, something that appears to be an ongoing theme on the All Creatures set. There was not a single grumpy crew member, not a single actor who preferred to work without the curious eyes of onlookers on them. They were perfectly happy to let people be part of the moment, even taking the time to speak with them during their breaks.
While everyone was consistently at the top of their game, the AD runner Tom delivered a particularly impressive performance, dancing around set, keeping an eye on everything, calling out what needed adjusting for the next take while simultaneously joking with the crowd. He displayed a level of patience most people could not muster in a million years. At times, he seemed like a magician with eight arms and six eyes, more efficient than a group of five people put together.
Around 6 or 7 in the evening, when they wrapped for the day, every crew member grabbed whatever they were closest to and put it away, a choreography they have practised many times and perfected over the years. Once filming at a location is complete, they make sure everything is left spotless. Usually, within 12 hours nothing remains to suggest they were ever there at all. As the cast and crew will be returning to this particular location within the next few weeks, a few posters and the Drover’s Arms sign on the local pub, the Devonshire (their food, incidentally, is beyond excellent) remain in place, as they are not in anyone’s way and also serve as a small treat for tourists who regularly find their way into the village.
Something That Goes Beyond Entertainment
All Creatures Great and Small might be based on Alf Wright’s books, but it has taken on a life of its own. Wright’s writing serves as inspiration for its storylines and characters, but the show does not allow itself to be confined by it. It honours his work by letting it evolve into something new, truly unique, and equally beautiful. And what could be a better legacy than inspiring others to create new art?
Especially now, when things feel sombre and unpredictable, a show like All Creatures feels more necessary – and more poignant – than ever. It offers a sense that the world is still intact. Not because it pretends suffering does not exist (the characters often go through difficult times), but because it does not exclusively focus on the negative and places more weight on community, (found) family, compassion and resilience.
The show evokes a peaceful happiness within me that I last truly felt as a child, when my grandparents, great aunts and uncles were still alive, when the house was full and there was always a stew cooking on the stove. A feeling no other show has managed to recreate. And having seen the cast and crew at work, it becomes clear that these emotions translate so well into our living rooms because they reflect the wonderful people behind it. Everyone involved is committed to making the series the very best it can be. And it shows.
Thank you for your continued hard work and dedication, All Creatures team! What you create goes beyond entertainment. It’s a refuge, something people can turn to in an overwhelming world to find a little peace and a sense of belonging.
Below, a few glimpses from filming:
]
