The Time Has Come for an All Creatures Great and Small Time Jump

For four seasons, All Creatures Great and Small has operated along a familiar timeline. Each installment begins in the spring — just in time for calving season — and follows veterinarians Siegfried Farnon (Samuel West) and James Herriot (Nicholas Ralph) as they treat the animals of the Yorkshire Dales throughout the summer and fall. A few weeks later, viewers check in with the residents of Skeldale House at Christmas, at which point housekeeper Mrs. Hall (Anna Madeley) solves some kind of crisis, preserving the merriment for all. Lather, rinse, deliver a few lambs, repeat.

The cyclical nature of All Creatures is one of its many comforts, but Season 4, which is set amid World War II in 1940, suggests that this rigid timeline has begun to limit the British drama. With Siegfried's younger brother Tristan (Callum Woodhouse) and now James away fighting the Germans, the time has come for the show to fast-forward to the postwar period, a move that would give the characters a chance to reset after nearly two seasons of unavoidable heaviness.

To be clear, the series has handled World War II better than many fans predicted after the Season 3 finale, in which Tristan was called up to the Royal Army Veterinary Corps. (As vets, he and James are protected from the draft, but their patriotism led them to volunteer for military service.) Season 4 kept the true horrors of the war at arm's length — when they were confronted with bad news on the radio, they simply changed the channel — instead focusing on the way these characters have been impacted by Tristan's absence and James' impending departure.

Still, the war cast an unmistakable pall over the Dales, where farmers struggled to make do without their young farmhands and fretted over the fate of their sons and brothers. With so many of Darrowby's finest far from home over the holidays, the Season 4 Christmas special, "On a Wing and a Prayer," was noticeably less festive than in years past. And though the birth of James and Helen's (Rachel Shenton) first child and Siegfried's embrace of veterinary student Richard Carmody (James Anthony-Rose) lightened the mood in the final act, these developments weren't enough to overcome the serious tone of the first half of the episode, which included multiple speeches about the importance of supporting the war effort in whatever way possible.

That trend stands to continue in Season 5, should All Creatures be renewed and pick back up in Spring 1941, amid the Germans' devastating bombing campaign on the British. While Siegfried and Carmody are capable of holding down the veterinary drama (watching Carmody fall in manure will never not be funny), creator Ben Vanstone has deemphasized that portion of the show as of late, particularly in Season 4, which prioritized interpersonal conflict over animal-related antics.

Adding the Blitz into the equation makes balancing these different elements even more difficult, as Siegfried and Carmody must now focus on their own survival as much as that of their patients. Not to mention, with just two vets in the practice, Siegfried and Mrs. Hall will be less free to explore their long-awaited romance — because nothing kills the mood quite like a phone ringing at all hours of the night.

James' new assignment as a bomber pilot also reduces the narrative possibilities for Helen, who's developed a close bond with Mrs. Hall since moving into Skeldale House. The final few episodes of Season 4 planted seeds for future conflicts — beyond motherhood, she must contend with her stubborn father Richard (Tony Pitts) and teenage sister Jenny (Imogen Clawson) — but her storyline always came back around to James. The longer he's gone, the more Helen's face will be turned up to the sky, looking for him, blunting the impact of any meaningful developments for her character.

Ralph's character has also run up against a wall. Whereas Season 3 was about James' unshakable sense of duty, Season 4 complicated his simplistic worldview: For the first time, he was forced to confront the fact that serving his country means neglecting his responsibility as a husband and, now, father. That tension was made explicit in the Christmas special when James fled the Royal Air Force base and hitched a ride back to Darrowby to visit the very pregnant Helen, and though everyone — including the kind man who picked him up on the side of the road — insisted he did the right thing by enlisting, the decision continued to weigh heavily on him.

If All Creatures plans to keep James around (rather than go the Tristan route and write him out of the season), it will no doubt continue to mine his internal struggle for drama, but by now, it's been so thoroughly established that there's not a ton left to explore. Much like viewers, James is simply waiting out the end of the war, at which point he'll be able to return to the veterinary practice and get on with his life.

Of course, the most obvious benefit of a time jump is the opportunity to be reunited with Tristan. In Season 4, his absence was felt acutely by both the residents of Skeldale House and fans, who have yearned for the playfulness and devious charm he brought to this chosen family. To some extent, Carmody has helped fill the void by serving as comedic relief, but despite his best efforts, Anthony-Rose failed to conjure up Woodhouse's charisma, and these seven episodes felt a touch flatter without it.

But shifting ahead to the end of World War II opens the door for Tristan's much-needed homecoming (assuming Woodhouse is game to don his white coat again). While the Channel 5 drama has remained loyal to its one-year-per-season timeline, there's a precedent for such a time jump: The original BBC series ended in 1980 with the onset of World War II; when it resumed eight years later, creator Bill Sellars set the action in 1949, giving the characters ample time to recover from the experience. Alf Wight's book series, which serves as a direct inspiration for the current iteration of the show, also moves nonlinearly as James distracts himself from his RAF duties by flashing back to specific moments from his veterinarian days.

Either option would allow All Creatures Great and Small to return to what it does best: gentle, low-stakes drama and good-natured disputes. Wartime has brought the Skeldale family closer than ever, but it's also held them captive; with a fifth season likely on the horizon, they deserve to be freed from that fear and anxiety and sent out into the Dales without anything holding them back.

All Creatures Great and Small Season 4 is streaming on PBS Passport. Join the discussion about the show in our forums.

Claire Spellberg Lustig is the Senior Editor at Primetimer and a scholar of The View. Follow her on Twitter at @c_spellberg.