All Creatures Great and Small *** (1975, Simon Ward, Anthony Hopkins, Lisa Harrow, Freddie Jones) – Classic Movie Review 8698

Fans of the BBC TV series will be surprised to find All Creatures Great and Small has a different cast for the 1975 film version, with Simon Ward as nice young assistant vet James Herriot, and Anthony Hopkins as his irascible older vet boss Siegfried Farnon.

Fans of the classic 1978–1990 BBC TV series will be surprised to find All Creatures Great and Small has a completely different cast for director Claude Whatham’s 1975 original big-screen movie version, with Simon Ward playing real-life nice young Yorkshire assistant veterinarian James Herriot, Anthony Hopkins as his irascible eccentric older vet boss Siegfried Farnon and Lisa Harrow as his girlfriend, Helen Alderson.

Otherwise the Yorkshire vets are open for business as usual in these good-natured anecdotes of pre-Second World War northern England life in 1937.

Ward gives a pleasant, appealing star performance, Hopkins’s gruff performance and the bright Thirties atmosphere of old-style life in the English countryside help a lot, and the film is well handled by sensitive director Whatham. Brian Stirner plays the younger brother Tristan Farnon but it is a minor role.

The painstaking screenplay by Hugh Whitemore is based on the novels If Only They Could Talk and It Shouldn’t Happen to a Vet by James Herriot [James Alfred Wight].

A 1976 sequel followed: It Shouldn’t Happen to a Vet, with John Alderton (as James Herriot) and Colin Blakely (as his boss, Siegfried Farnon) and Lisa Harrow reprising her role as Helen Herriot.

Also in the cast are Freddie Jones, T P McKenna, Brenda Bruce, John Collin, Christine Buckley, Jane Collins, Glynne Geldart, Harold Goodwin, Doreen Mantle, Daphne Oxenford, Jenny Runacre, John Rees, Bert Palmer, Fred Feast, John Nettleton and Jane Solo.

Christopher Timothy and Robert Hardy played the two main roles in the 90 episodes of the subsequent TV series All Creatures Great and Small (1978-1990). Timothy recalled: ‘Robert Hardy was good fun and he made us laugh a lot – and quake sometimes, because he didn’t suffer fools and he didn’t suffer nonsense.’ Timothy’s 1979 book of memoirs is called Vet Behind the Ears, a title suggested to him by actor Gorden Kaye.

The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons’ rules banned advertising so James Alfred Wight needed to use a pseudonym and he borrowed it from James Herriot, the Birmingham City football club goalkeeper in the 1952 Cup Final. Born in Sunderland, Alf Wight was three weeks old when his family moved to Glasgow, where he spent 23 years, and he never lost his Scots accent. Simon Ward plays Herriot as a Londoner. Alf moved to Thirsk in North Yorkshire in 1940 to work for Donald Sinclair (Siegfried Farnon).

Simon Ward died on 20 July 2012, aged 70. He had an uncredited role as a schoolboy If… (1968) when he was 26. His best film work is in Young Winston (1972) and All Creatures Great and Small (1975).

Freddie Jones (1927–2019).

RIP Freddie Jones (1927–2019), who plays Cranford.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8698

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