“All Creatures Great and Small” Season 3: Ending with a Refugee Story

(Editor’s note: Included in the following spoilers (for “All Creatures Great and Small” season 3 finale, including the ending.)

“All Creatures Great and Small” continues to reach a point in world history where each new season has been able to draw something bigger. The search for something warm and inviting led many viewers to the show in the second half of 2020. It has now become a years-long process to integrate the real world so that the city of Darrowby does not become a fantasy.

For PBS series head writer Ben Vanstone, “All Creatures Great and Small” was an opportunity to embrace the world instead of pretending it didn’t exist.

“When we started filming (Season 3), Ukraine was invaded by Russia. We were in a bit of an epidemic when we wrote it. We’ve done episodes about the TB test where it’s all about the greater good. With war looming, it all felt like it spoke to the world we live in. Not in a completely direct way, but it was certainly part of our conversations. Even if by accident, we took things from real life to make the show.”

Connected

Connected

The rhyming of history became less abstract and more real when the series filmed a scene involving the arrival of World War II refugees in Darrowby.

“We were shooting episode 6. There’s a scene where a group of refugee kids come off the bus,” Vanstone said. “That day, the local primary school came down for a day trip to see our filming. There was a Ukrainian refugee child with them who did not speak English. He had an iPad on which things were translated. He wondered what was happening to these refugee children. 80 years later we told the same story. There were refugees in the Dales who escaped the conflict. It really brought home to all of us the truth of what we do.”

Season 3 ends with a traditional Christmas episode and the arrival of Eva (Ella Bernstein), one of Darrowby’s new kids. The usual crew of Skeldale House, including James (Nicholas Ralph), Helen (Rachel Shenton), Mrs Hall (Anna Madeley), Siegfried (Samuel West) and Tristan (Callum Woodhouse), engage in cultural exchange, including Christmas and Hannukah.

Helen Williams/Playground/Channel 5 Television

“It was actually based on a true story by Colin Callender, our Playground executive producer. His mother, who is of Jewish origin, was evacuated. He had never experienced Christmas before and he just thought it was great with all these strange traditions he had never come across. To experience Christmas in a way that maybe non-Christians experienced it, I thought, was good fun as well,” Vanstone said. “And it was great to have little Eva in the house. If a child is born within the episode, there is a risk that the episode has actually slipped away. When everyone does their best to make sure that the children living away from their parents have a good Christmas, it fills me with a lot of heart, joy and warmth. But there’s also inevitably some sadness in it.”

“The beautiful Ella Bernstein came and was so good and so professional and worked so hard. It was absolutely brilliant,” Madeley said. “It’s also a lot of fun because someone is looking at it with new eyes. You see your environment through their eyes again, all the new things they learn every day about the job and how to do it. It just makes everyone rally when there’s someone on set and you want them to have a great experience. He reminds everyone that he loves what he does and wants to pass that on to him and infect him with it.”

Another source of joy amid the heartache is a long-awaited first kiss between Mrs. Hall and old walking partner Gerald (Will Thorp). It’s a soft Season 3 book that goes well with the James and Helen wedding that started it. And it’s also a tradition that these seasonal Christmas specials bring a big romantic breakthrough, this time with someone other than James.

“In a way, Mrs. Hall had a very clear, well-thought-out idea of ​​what she should do and what she shouldn’t do. Maybe he tried to have his cake and eat it for a little bit and then realized he couldn’t do it and he had to be honest with Gerald,” Madeley said. “The idea that war could break out and someone could move away and never see them again, when we’re suddenly faced with that, it creates a reaction. And I think he can act without a moment’s thought. It makes it more complicated and messy, sweeter and more fun and instinctive.”

“Gerald’s the only person we ever see do for Mrs. Hall, I think he’s the only one who makes her a cup of tea or brings her a glass of something.” Otherwise, he runs after everyone. Very thorough, sweet and very open. He’s direct and reliable, which maybe he didn’t have in the past,” Vanstone said.

This change in the relationship between Mrs. Hall and Gerald is also related to the relationship between Mrs. Hall and Siegfried. There has been a long-standing warmth between the two, as the pair have grown to become confidants and comforters. Mrs. Hall offers a reassuring hand as Siegfried’s memories of the Great War begin to resurface. It is Siegfried who listens sympathetically after Mrs. Hall returns from a complicated meeting with her estranged son.

Helen Williams/Playground/Channel 5 Television

Calibrating this dynamic will continue to be a balancing act as the series progresses.

“It’s a constant conversation, and it’s been going on since the beginning,” Madeley said. “It’s a delicate dance of working out when and when they’re friends, when they’re family members. They got to know each other better and know a little more about each other’s history. It’s touching that they give each other space and privacy, but at the same time they are able to recognize someone’s needs.”

“It’s inevitable that when male and female characters are as close as they are, it seems inevitable that there will be romance. We deliberately resisted pointing in either direction. Neither of them was a place to be with anyone in any meaningful sense. Mrs. Hall is still aware of who she is. She is still a married woman and works for Siegfried. I think in many ways it’s more about pulling them apart than bringing them together, but it will also be interesting to see how they develop.”

After a year of uncertainty and upheaval, it only made sense that the end of the season brought about a significant change in the makeup of Skeldale House. As Siegfried and James find ways to continue their training in the face of impending war, Tristan joins the ranks of the enlisted Darrowby.

Bittersweet end to the season, Tristan with a bittersweet smile on his face. It still leaves open some possible major changes as the show’s creative team plots the course of Season 4.

“You already land with a built-in story engine. It is not a problem to solve, but a change in all dynamics. How will Siegfried be without Tristan? What does James do? Who does Siegfried take it from if he hasn’t beaten Tristan? We automatically land in a place that has a natural momentum, rather than a sense of “What’s the story this year?” Vanstone said. “We’re still at war, but in some ways everyone has come to terms with that a little bit. That doesn’t mean there won’t be tough times, and while there may be a bit of a shadow hanging over us, we’re at a stage where people just get on with their lives.”

“All Creatures Great and Small” is available to stream on the PBS app and on PBS Masterpiece Prime Video.

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