Everything to Remember Ahead of 'All Creatures Great and Small' Season 6

All Creatures Great & Small will return to our screens with Season 6 on January 11, 2026. Are you ready? Put on the kettle and bring out the scones!

Based on the immensely popular books by James Herriot, the pen name of Yorkshire veterinarian J. Alf Wight, the BBC first aired its adaptation in the late 1970s and ran it until the 1990s. The initial cast included Shakespearean star Robert Hardy as Siegfried Farnon, with Peter Davison (who later left to star as the Fifth Doctor in Doctor Who) as his brother Tristan, and Christopher Timothy as James Herriot. The series aired on many local PBS stations, so it wasn’t surprising that Masterpiece picked up the new version, a 21st-century reboot.

Set in mid-1941, Season 5 depicts a community dominated by war. James Herriot (Nicholas Ralph) has formed a bond with his RAF crew, and they’re about to fly a long-range practice mission, where they may well encounter the Luftwaffe. But as they are about to board their plane, James collapses, and wakes up to find himself in sick bay, suffering from brucellosis, which damaged farmers’ herds and terrified Helen during her pregnancy. It’s the end of his flying service, and an end to his camaraderie with his crew.

In the future, he’ll be haunted by feelings of inadequacy, that he didn’t do enough, and terrible news compounds his guilt: his crew is shot down on the rescheduled training mission. What is worse is that people tell him that he was lucky to get sick and avoid going to war. Helen is the only one to whom he entrusts his true feelings. However, it also blessedly returns him to Yorkshire, where the series needed him. Let’s run down the major points of last season ahead of Season 6’s premiere.

James returns to a changed Skeldale House. Everyone is busy, taking on extra tasks, even Helen, with a small baby, helps a friend with her Victory Garden. Housekeeper Audrey Hall (Anna Madeley) longs to be more useful and decides to volunteer as a blackout warden. The officious Mr. Bosworth (Jeremy Swift), in charge of blackout operations, turns her down, despite her First World War service in the WRNS (Women’s Royal Naval Service, nicknamed the Wrens) – it wouldn’t be safe for a woman late at night in the dark! Even worse, Mr. Bosworth is then reprimanded by Siegfried after he advises a farmer to paint white stripes on his cows if he doesn’t want them to get run over during a blackout. (Seriously, this was done, despite the risk of lead poisoning.)

But Bosworth reveals his human side when his dog is found dead, and Audrey comforts him, and admits her loneliness and worry over her son Edward, now at sea. Are they best friends now? Well, no. But Audrey, as she cheerfully tells him, is used to dealing with petty tyrants. She loses patience with him, however, when a plane drops an item in a field, and it’s a harmless supply package from a British aircraft and not the bomb Bosworth suspects. 

In James’s absence, Siegfried hires an assistant, geeky, sweet Richard Carmody (James Anthony-Rose), academically brilliant but low on social skills. James accompanies him on his rounds and, in a noble effort to help out Helen, takes baby Jimmy with them, only to leave the baby behind by mistake. Richard has a crush on land girl Doris working at Heston Grange. Helen’s sister Jenny is also captivated by Doris’s city upbringing, even though she knows it’s not a life for her. (Richard finally gets the courage to invite Doris to the pub with everyone toward the end of the series.)

Siegfried has a near miss with exotic aristocratic Miss Grantley (Juliet Aubrey), who has spent many years as an archaeologist in the Middle East and now cares for goats on her brother’s estate. She responded to a request that animal owners help with early diagnosis by sending samples for analysis. (This is just one example of his smart ideas to improve the practice; the man has a brain the size of a planet.)

But after a promising beginning, Siegfried asks to borrow her book about her archaeological discoveries, and then mansplains her mistakes to her. Oops.

Tristan also came home partway through the season. Siegfried meets Tristan at the station, assuming his brother will automatically return to the practice. But Tristan has a job locally, training veterinarians for the army, three days a week. But he also assumes he still has a room in his brother’s home, only to discover it occupied by Richard. (Audrey acquires another mattress, but it’s still cramped conditions.) Rather sweetly, Richard, who spent most of his childhood at boarding schools, eventually confesses he enjoys having a roomie, and they bond over chasing a rogue snake at Pumphrey Manor.

Not that there’s danger to Mrs. Pumphrey (Patricia Hodge) or her Pekinese Tricki Woo (Doris, back for her second season). The two have moved into a cottage now that the Manor has been requisitioned as a military hospital, but whenever they stop by, it’s still Tricki Woo’s territory.

And as always, there’s the animals, from the aforementioned snake to a cat that rises from the dead (she licked the spoon her owner used for her opiate medicine) and then goes dramatically into heat. Siegfried and Tristan visit a horse for a routine treatment, and it drops to the ground senseless. It gets up almost immediately, and everyone begins breathing again.

One farmer presents them with two bottles of homemade elderberry wine to celebrate Tristan’s return, setting off a catastrophe. The car is out of gas because the brothers quarreled over whose petrol coupons to use, and no one filled the tank. They begin the long walk home, tearing clothing, wading through a river, and, because it’s a hot day, drinking all the wine and bonding. Meanwhile, Richard received brilliant exam results and won a prize: a research post in London, which opened a spot for Seigfried to ask Tristan to work part-time with the family instead of assuming.

Christmas of 1941, coinciding with baby Jimmy’s first birthday, is planned to be something special – Audrey is trading food coupons for a goose! But her son Edward’s ship was bombed and sank near Singapore. She bonds and cares for a sick fox, a living creature who depends on her, and persuades Siegfried, who doesn’t believe wild animals should be tamed, to treat him. The fox survives the night, and Edward calls, injured but alive. Now that’s cause for celebration!

Season 6 will pick up with a time jump to 1945 and the end of the war. But with returning soldiers comes modernity and a whole new set of challenges as the practice enters the post-war era.

All Creatures Great & Small Season 6 premieres on local PBS stations on Sunday, January 11, 2026, at 9 p.m. ET, as well as on the PBS app and the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel. All episodes of Season 6 will be available to stream on premiere day for PBS Passport members.