If you wanted to find a series that showed off the beauty of filming in the UK, you’d be hard pressed to find a better one than All Creatures Great and Small. Both the original BBC version and now the modern one for Channel 5.

“The stunning Yorkshire Dales – endless fields of green – are an extra character in the series, prominently displayed throughout,” says Deborah Morgan, line producer on the new version. “We did a lot of drone shots to really capture them in all their glory.”

“These are stories of Yorkshire, the whole Herriot world and tourism is enormous, so we needed the authenticity and wanted to showcase the county,” adds Sharon Moran, executive producer at Colin Callender’s Playground, who produce the show, now in its sixth series, alongside Masterpiece on PBS in the US, with All3Media International as a partner.

Ben Vanstone (The Last Kingdom) is lead writer, and Brian Percival (Downton Abbey) main director on the series, which has filmed across a range of locations in Yorkshire, including the beautiful and historic market town of Grassington, which plays a central role as Darrowby village, where the veterinary surgery (Skeldale House) is based.

“It’s the perfect location, with an authentic sense of community and the Dales in the background, but does require a lot of re-dressing because it’s a modern day square and the series is set in the 1940s, so we’ve had to change shop fronts and because it’s the war, put marks over the windows,” explains Morgan. “But we kept part of the village open during filming so locals could move freely, and they were very supportive.”

She also points to the fact it’s quick and easy to get around Yorkshire, just open roads (although some are a little narrower, which needs to be factored in for the bigger trucks), there are no traffic lights, and it takes about 20 minutes to get from one location to the next. The team were also able to base themselves in a quarry just a short drive from Grassington.

The interiors of Skeldale House, however, have actually been filmed at a converted studio in a light industrial park near Harrogate. “The space has evolved over the series, and is now used as the pub interior too,” says Moran. “The crew love filming there and on location.”

The majority of those crew are local to North Yorkshire, especially from Skipton, and from nearby major cities Leeds and Manchester. “There’s a lot of skill in the north, so we didn’t need to worry about bringing talent up from London (just a few people in the end),” says Morgan.

The production team really took advantage of and nurtured that local crew base. “We’ve had people on as runners for series one, who’ve moved up to higher positions through the show, and taken on work experience people, so we’re a kind of unofficial training and development organisation,” says Moran.

The production team also worked closely and developed talent with Screen Yorkshire (who part funded the first couple of series and have provided production support since then). “They run a scheme called Beyond Brontës, so we’ve taken trainees through that, and we took someone on from their ScriptEd training scheme who went on to be assistant script editor,” adds Moran.

“They’ve also been good at turning around road closures for us, including the opening sequence when James Herriot first arrives on the bus at the crossroads. They made sure it was closed off and let us take control,” says Gary Barnes, location manager on the first couple of series.

Yorkshire is very proud of the Herriot world and tourism that has come with it. “There is a sense of local ownership and so getting it right was really important,” says Melissa Gallant, executive producer at Playground. “This includes the cast too. We brought on Bev Keogh (casting director)  early, who specialises in northern casting and is brilliant at enmeshing fresh talent with bigger names. We wanted James Herriot to be played by someone the audience didn’t know and Scottish because the real Herriot (Alf White) grew up in Glasgow, and Nick Ralph proved to be perfect.”

The team gave a constant nod to the original series, trying to replicate the experience and feeling people had watching it, but with “a fresh cast, not just copying what Robert Hardy (Siegfried Farnon) or Carol Drinkwater (Helen Herriot) did, and a modern lens, particularly on the female characters, giving them bigger roles and more depth,” adds Gallant.

They also wanted to have ethnic diversity, which was a challenge on screen because a lot of the characters are based on specific people. “But we were given licence by the Harriet family and estate to change the backgrounds and origins of some people, such as the character of George Pandhi (Kriss Dosanjh) who was given a southern Asian heritage,” says Gallant.

“We also have story lines that embrace disability and socio-economic diversity, and it’s the same with our crew base and writing team (which has been added to with more ethnically diverse talent). We have an access coordinator, Jess Mabel Jones, who helps manage this, and Channel 5 has its ‘no diversity, no commission’ initiative, which helped guide us.”

Sustainability on set has also grown in importance. “In the last year, we have moved our set entirely over to LED lighting, and we’ve changed from diesel power generators to battery. We care about the environment we’re working in and look forward to shooting more here in Yorkshire,” concludes Moran.

Back to regional case studies