Five minutes with… All Creatures Great and Small stars Nicholas Ralph and Rachel Shenton

​Channel 5’s All Creatures Great and Small – about the adventures of Yorkshire veterinary surgeon James Herriot – is one such wholesome, heart-warming series that fans look forward to year after year – as do the stars, who say returning for series four was like coming home.

As we look forward to returning to Skeldale House for another year, let’s find out more from stars Nicholas Ralph, 33, who plays vet James Herriot, and Rachel Shenton, 35, who plays his wife Helen.

It’s wartime now in All Creatures – how does that impact the series?

NR: We kick off spring of 1940, so it’s the ‘Bore’ War [Phoney War]. There’s not very much going on just now, so we very much kick off into the All Creatures that we know and love from the previous few seasons, very much focused on the community and the stories within that.

We’ve got a wonderful story we kick off with with a young boy, Wesley Binks, it’s a story from the books: he’s got a little dog that’s a bit unwell, and he’s a bit of a toerag, and James gets a lot of it at the end, so he kind of takes him under his wing.

We also see James be a kind of father figure, an older adult male figure, to the boy as well. So we kick off with a really charming story.

RS: Yes, it’s still very much about community and love. And I think that one of the scenes that springs to mind, we’ve got a couple of wayward goats in Skeldale House, which is quite a chaotic scene, a nice way into the series.

Goats! How was it working with them?

NR: Weren’t they immaculately trained?

RS: They were so brilliant!

NR: You’d think it would be carnage…

RS: …And it just wasn’t, and they did the same thing again, and again, and again. They were so well trained. And they had quite a lot to do as well.

NR: They did! It was a big day for the goats!

RS: The script was complex! And they impressed us every time.

How’s married life for James aand Helen? Are they thinking about starting a family, maybe?

RS: That’s definitely what they’re thinking about. It’s obviously 1940, it’s a natural trajectory of a relationship in that time, recently married. So I think that’s where their heads are at.

And they want that, they want to have a family together.

I think there is a very real sense of what’s happening in the wider world. And it’s hard, at times, to navigate their way through that decision. The reality is that James could get called up [to the RAF], and then Helen would potentially be on her own with a baby. And they’re real things.

I think that’s always just really relatable in terms of where we are now in the world. There’s always a million things as to why you don’t do something.

But yes, that’s a very real part of their world. And actually, it’s where we start, and it’s a theme throughout.

But you see their union deepen again, which is just really nice. Every season we see that… it was all about romance, and they were sneaking off, and then it sort of settled and got to a deeper understanding.

They’re very much on each other’s teams, and working together as a team, and working their way through this difficult part, and trying to best navigate around this huge thing that could potentially happen.

And they both have their own ways of dealing with that – you see that throughout the series, and sometimes that causes them to be on the same page, and sometimes it doesn’t.

And that’s really nice about the series, because I think it’s really real and relatable.

You were back filming in Yorkshire – how was that?

NR: [There’s] places that we’re going back to that we know and love, like Grassington is still our Darrowby, so we’re there a couple of times throughout the season.

We’re back up at Arncliffe, which I absolutely love, which is the back of Skeldale House…

Do you get quite a lot of interest from locals when you film?

RS: It’s like a theatre in Grassington! It’s lovely, everyone’s so nice. It’s a nice day, they bring their chairs, they sit and watch with their ice cream.

It wouldn’t be possible without the support of the local community, particularly Grassington.

Because you know what it’s like, you just take over when we arrive, so many of us and we’re transforming it into, you know, the 40s, and it couldn’t be done without their support.

You must meet some amazing fans on set...

NR: It was great this year, because we met a lot of people… we met families from America that were over, just off the back of the show, not expecting to see anything, and they were bumping into us at Grassington.

There were some Dutch families I met, there was an American couple that kind of followed us around and finally caught us at Arncliffe.

It’s really cool to see how the show is having that effect as well, in these other countries, to the point where people want to come over and visit.

There was one lady… she’s been at Grassington every year now trying to meet us, because she named her sons Tristan and James. So she was like: ‘This is like the fourth time I’ve been up, it’s so nice to meet you’, and I was like: ‘I’m really happy to meet you, like, I’m so glad I met you! Your sons are called James and Tristan, brilliant!’

How is it coming back to the show once again?

NR: It feels like home away from home now. It felt like five minutes before I’d left, and then we’re just driving back into Harrogate to start again. And then everyone’s back, we have so many returning crew and directors, creatives and cast that it does feel like a little family out there.

So this year, even more so than the other ones, it felt quite easy.

And once you’re back into costume, and I’ve got my hair slicked back, no more five o’clock stubble, you’re right back!

All Creatures Great and Small returns to Channel 5 on Thursday, October 5 at 9pm.