All Creatures Great and Small (2020) s04e03 – Right Hand Man

Right Hand Man reintroduces the idea of a triumvirate to the veterinary practice. Nicholas Ralph has put in for a student to be placed with them, Samuel West’s nasty attitude be damned. We meet James Anthony-Rose before Ralph and West, as Anthony-Rose discovers all the street signs have been taken down in the village (to prevent the Bosch from finding their way), and he has an amusing lost montage.

He arrives just in time to help Ralph with Patricia Hodge’s latest dog problem. Not little Tricki Woo (played by Derek again, but also Dora, which makes me worry about Derek’s health), but rather a bulldog she’s taken in while his owner’s off at war. Anthony-Rose puts his foot in it, and we’re off to the races.

The episode’s got a lot going on. Having decided to have a baby, Ralph and wife Rachel Shenton are trying to find some time to work on making one. Ralph’s going to be busy with Hodge’s bulldog, while West’s got a horse with an allergy problem. Anthony-Rose offers his advice in both, with part of the gag being how unhelpful his (purely academic) advice can be. Then there’s the Anthony-Rose training subplot, which West unexpectedly takes point on, giving Ralph pause. Ralph’s various pauses stress out Shenton even more. She has a good scene with Hodge about being… well, okay, about being wives, but even as it bellyflops on Bechdel, it’s a good scene. There’s some very solid character development for Hodge in the scene, too.

Meanwhile, Anna Madeley’s very gentle romance with Will Thorp continues.

Speaking of very gentle, the war makes its presence (and its impending effects) known, with West getting into it with the local trainees about how they’re disrespecting the Yorkshire ways. It’ll figure into the main plot a couple ways, but also how—Shenton reminds everyone—the war’s still coming, and they might lose Ralph at any minute. Something Ralph’s not thinking about, which the show’s also been avoiding the last couple episodes.

And even though the show’s finally acknowledged the war’s not done with it, it’s still unclear if “Creatures” will be able to incorporate the foreboding or just use it in one-offs.

Anyway. There are some great veterinary scenes, good or better moments for pretty much everyone, and Anthony-Rose certainly seems like a fine addition to the regular cast. For how long? Well, I suppose I could Google, but I shan't.

All Creatures Great and Small (2020) s03e07 – Merry Bloody Christmas

Pun fully intended, Callum Woodhouse continues to show why he’s “All Creatures”’s trickiest casting but also its most successful. This Christmas special is set, appropriately, at Christmas, only war’s on, and no one’s feeling like celebrating this year. Especially not with Nicholas Ralph chomping at the bit for his chance to go—after the proper season’s finale where he and Woodhouse signed up, which was basically the season arc… it turns out they might not get shipped out anyway. They’re exempt because they’re vets or whatever.

There’s no annual Christmas party in the offing, not until Anna Madeley discovers her love interest, Will Thorp, is moving away. She invites him over and then has to put together a party, so it doesn’t look like she just invited him over.

The special filters much of the household goings-on through guest star Ella Bernstein. She’s playing a refugee from… somewhere, presumably in England, though maybe not. She’s Jewish, adorable, precocious, and fascinated by Christmas. She also basically fills the function of Ralph for the special. Ralph and Rachel Shenton are entirely support here.

The veterinary case this episode—outside Bernstein getting to meet Mrs. P. (I’m entirely on board with Patricia Hodge now, even if last we saw the manor, she was getting it ready for the war effort, and now it’s empty) and Tricki Woo (played, as ever, by Derek), who have a kitten problem only a little kid can help with—is about Samuel West and the racehorse he nursed back to health in the regular season. It was a great episode for West. This episode sort of hopes everyone forgets how emotional he got because he quickly finds himself letting old war buddy Michael Maloney bribe him into ignoring some medical conditions.

West’s change in behavior doesn’t go unnoticed, not when Woodhouse comes out to the stables to help out and discovers something suspect.

It’s a very emotion-filled episode for West, Woodhouse, and Madeley, as they once again have to contend with their abnormal but normal, actually, family structure, with great acting from all three. Woodhouse gets to be the stand-out; well, and Madeley, but not in the family arc, though she seems to have a realization about doing emotional labor for the boys).

Besides West’s slightly rushed character arc and a couple of places they obviously cut out another scene for time, it’s a stellar episode.

All Creatures Great and Small (2020) s02e07 – Christmas Special

This Christmas special, “All Creatures,” goes for the jugular: the main veterinary case is a very sick Tricki Woo, whose illness panics pretty much everyone who’s ever met him. When Patricia Hodge calls for assistance, Samuel West heads out, but he, Callum Woodhouse, and Nicholas Ralph all have significant involvement in the A-plot as the episode progresses.

There are a lot of subplots going on—with the threat of imminent war (it’s Christmas 1938, after all) undergirding the whole episode. The subplots (not in order of importance): Woodhouse waiting for his exam results, which echoes back to last season’s Christmas special, Woodhouse and bartender love interest Mollie Winnard sort of reuniting for a rendezvous, housekeeper Anna Madeley’s proto-romance with now pal Will Thorp, West’s romance with Dorothy Atkinson (who’s barely in the episode but excellent as always), Ralph and Rachel Shenton talking about married practicalities, Ralph tending jerky farmer James Burrows’s cow, and, finally, Ralph and Shenton having two Christmas Day commitments. He promised Madeley they’d be having Christmas lunch with the practice; Shenton thought they were having lunch with her family; her little sister, Imogen Clawson, has been going all out putting it together.

Plus, Ralph waiting to talk to his parents on the phone, not having heard from mom Gabriel Quigley since he told her he wasn’t coming home to Glasgow in the last episode.

And it’s not even a particularly long Christmas special. It’s a few minutes longer than a regular episode, and half that time is the sentimental (albeit well-executed) Christmas tracking shots.

The practice is also throwing their annual Christmas party, which throws various characters together and helps their plots along, but it’s mostly background to the veterinary case with Tricki.

It’s a great episode for Hodge, who’s now entirely out of Diana Rigg’s shadow (it helps the character’s quite different), including her friendship with Ralph. Oh, and, of course, Ralph is terrorizing Woodhouse to find out about his exam results. I’m not sure there’s a wasted moment in the episode; they’ve got so much to get through.

A number of the plots just get stirred, so they don’t stick to the sides, arranging things for further development next season. As a result, the episode’s not exactly done in summary; it’s just in a hurry, starting with Ralph’s unkempt appearance when he goes out to Burrows’s farm on an emergency.

There’s lots of good acting from the cast, not just Hodge. Ralph, Woodhouse, Madeley, and Shenton all get some excellent scenes. Shenton once again is floundering between plot points, but they seem to have gotten it squared for next season. Unfortunately, there’s a little less development on Madeley’s romance—and the “should be a bombshell” revelation she’s still married; unless I’m forgetting something, the show always made it seem like she was a widow.

It’s a particularly good veterinary case, too, and not just because it’s the show’s most adorable regular animal. There are twists and turns, with West having to consult the other boys on medical treatment and best bedside practices. The show never gets saccharine about the plot either, which is impressive. Though it might seem like they could easily go that route because the patient’s obnoxiously cute.

As Christmas specials go—in general—it’s a good one, and as “All Creatures”’s actual season two finale, it’s a splendid capstone to the season. They did have that one stumble (well, two stumbles in one episode) without further unsteadiness. Next season’s going to be a lot—based on how they’ve paced the first two seasons, World War II’s breaking out in the last couple episodes of the regular season (September 1939)—but I’m expecting them to ably handle it.

All Creatures Great and Small (2020) s02e03 – We Can But Hope

“All Creatures Great and Small” gets away with a certain amount of sentimentality and near saccharinity because it’s about people caring about their animals’ suffering. The show’s about folks at their most empathetic (right or wrong), and that emotionality can cover a whole bunch. However, this episode veers away from that comfort zone as Nicholas Ralph finds himself losing the Kobayashi Maru. New widow Amy Nuttall has a herd of sick cows, and there’s nothing to be done about it. So Ralph decides to advise Nuttall to sell her farm (to one of the other men in the village, who don’t think a woman can cut it) and spends the episode distressed over how to do so. He keeps hoping Nuttall will realize the seriousness of her predicament, and he won’t have to mention it.

Except Ralph does mention it to other people, specifically Rachel Shenton, which leads to an argument on their first dress-up date. They go to the very fancy restaurant (where Shenton used to go with her rich ex-fiancé), and the whole thing goes so wrong the episode skips the presumably terrible second half of the date. It’s peculiar since there’s an entire comic subplot about Ralph’s muddy shoes leading up to the dinner, with Shenton’s little sister, Imogen Clawson, and dad, Tony Pitts, getting involved. It’s a particularly nice scene for Clawson and Pitts, who haven’t had a lot of just family time, not in service of a plotline.

Skipping the second half of the date makes sense by the end of the episode, when Hope gins together a happy ending. The episode’s got a first-time scripter, Chloë Mi Lin Ewart, who’s charged with resolving a plot thread the show started in the first episode. Ewart’s also got the task of introducing Diana Rigg’s replacement, Patricia Hodge. Rigg passed away between seasons. The whole episode feels like it’s buried its lede, Hodge. Hodge’s part is far more verbose than Rigg’s; she plays it with an overabundance of personality. Of course, she’s suddenly got to compensate for the character having a comedic lack of decorum. It’s an unfair comparison—there’s only one Diana Rigg—but it’s also not a good recasting, which the show tries disguising with comedy.

Hodge might play better if the other ending weren’t so trite and vice versa. The show can get away with these lackluster moments, but two missteps in a row—at the end of the episode—are unfortunate. It’s the first unsuccessful “All Creatures Great and Small.” It’s also easily the most ambitious episode so far, both pragmatically and intentionally. If the show’s going to be about Ralph’s character development, giving him rushed, thin character development will be a problem.

In addition to the farm veterinary arc, there’s a house one. Anna Madeley is still prodding Samuel West to give little brother Callum Woodhouse more responsibility in the veterinary practice (even though Woodhouse didn’t pass his exam, which means he’s not licensed or whatever). West gets Woodhouse some hens to tend; also, so West can have eggs whenever he wants them. It’s a primarily comedic arc, with the hens going over to the neighbors, with the hens bullying Hodge’s adorable Pekingese, but also with the brother character relationship thing going on. It’s the much better arc this episode. Again, a problem since the A plot isn’t just crucial for the episode or season; it’s a defining development for the series itself.

Madeley doesn’t get a lot to do. I was expecting her almost beau to return from last time; instead, she just gets to feel lonely because she doesn’t have a subplot. Her game night’s canceled because the boys either have dates or professional obligations. Speaking of dates, West has an offscreen date with his new love interest, so she does seem to be sticking around.

Even after the unsteady conclusion, the series has more than enough stockpiled goodwill. It’d just have been nice for a real pay-off for one of the show’s only big swings.