Animal instincts
All Creatures Great & Small executive producer Sharon Moran details the demands of making a TV series featuring numerous farm animals, scripting on-screen births and arranging a children’s pet show.
“Never work with animals or children,” said WC Fields. So when Playground Entertainment approached 5 and All3Media International with the proposition of commissioning a new adaptation of James Herriot’s globally successful series of All Creatures Great & Small novels, the producers were about to find out whether there was any truth in Fields’ statement.
While the industry is no stranger to featuring family pets – and even farm animals – in the background on screen, we quickly realised this show would need a whole different approach. Beloved Yorkshire vet Alf Wight, the real James Herriot and author of the novels, was no standard city vet. He was just as likely to be out in the wild Yorkshire Dales helping farmers care for their herds as he was to be in his surgery treating well-trained pets.
A wide variety of animals are central to his world, so to bring his warm and wonderful stories to life authentically, and to deliver the high-quality production values inherent to any premium, primetime drama, we knew we would need to get up close and personal with creatures of all shapes, sizes and dispositions. The first two days of filming alone on season one in September 2019 called for not only three cats, one small dog, a tortoise, a rabbit, a sheepdog and an Irish setter dog, but also 14 sheep, a herd of cows and a hero cow with a newborn calf suffering from a broken leg.
Add to that other key considerations such as government legislation around the movement of farm animals, the unstoppable forces of nature, and even the many demands of recreating an authentic village show, and we knew producing All Creatures – which is now airing its sixth season – would be an unforgettable experience.
So how does a production company approach the day-to-day challenges of working with such an extensive list of animal actors and train them to perform as though they are in need of the healing hands of Mr Herriot and his veterinary colleagues?
The first step was to employ the professional skills of licensed animal handlers 1st Choice Animals, alongside an independent animal welfare advisor plus consultant vet advisors. These three separate roles, each bringing their own specific skills, would come together to provide the expertise needed to ensure all aspects of the animals’ needs were at the forefront of everything.
Unlike with human actors, our animal actors aren’t able to read a script to know in story terms they may have broken their leg or be suffering from an abscess in their throat or need to lie down on cue to simulate giving birth. Therefore, we must create the illusion of these behaviours for the camera and the audience while ensuring we work within the relevant government animal welfare guidelines and the animals are well prepared, comfortable and never distressed.
Initially, during the storylining process, the first collaboration was with the veterinary consultants Jim Wight, son of Alf Wight (the real James Herriot), and Andy Barrett of Craven Farm Vets. Both Jim and Andy worked with Alf Wight at the real-life Skeldale House Veterinary Practice in Thirsk and bring decades of experience of working as vets in the Yorkshire Dales, plus endless stories of procedures, which – in addition to Alf Wight’s wonderful original stories – have contributed to the show.
We also called upon Andy, our veterinary consultant, for much more than his advice – he is actually the hand/arm double for Nicholas Ralph (who plays James Herriot) for those animal sequences that require expert clinical veterinary skills, such as delivering and handling a lamb or calf straight after birth.
Once the stories had been decided, the next step was to discuss with the animal handlers how to achieve the specific scripted action. Most of us are used to small domestic animals in our lives but rarely encounter farm animals up close, let alone expect them to ‘act’ out a specific action on cue. How do you train a cow to raise its leg on command as if it’s broken, or to lie down to give birth?
The answer is with enormous patience over many weeks, very gentle encouragement and generous rewarding. We also learned the importance of accommodating the animals’ natural behaviours throughout our filming, such as respecting the fact many are herd animals so risk becoming distressed when separated – so we would always ensure a companion animal was within sight or sound off camera for company during training and filming.
The production team made the decision in the early stages of S1 to use Jersey cows as much as possible, as they are dairy cows used to being handled during milking so are predominantly very gentle-natured and easy to train. Although Jerseys would have been less commonplace in the high Dales in Alf Wight’s era and Shorthorns would have been more popular, we had to use creative licence in our choice of breed from a health and safety perspective for everyone working closely around the animals.
One very steep learning curve for the production team was discovering the entire filming schedule would be dictated by legislation around the movement and standstill rules of certain farm animal groups. While we’re very used to scheduling around actor and location availability, day/night and extreme weather challenges, the additional consideration of scheduling around the various animal movements in and out of location farms took some head-scratching and clever strategic planning.
For specific episodes where animal births were scripted, the challenge became even greater as we quite rightly weren’t permitted to move a pregnant animal within a certain timeframe of their due date. Early in pre-production, it became clear the production needed its own farm in which all the animal actors could live for the five months a year they are needed in Yorkshire. We are extremely fortunate to rent a glorious set of barns and fields 10 minutes from our studio location, so all our animals live there between February and June each year, and there’s no happier sight than our herd of cows and sheep being let out of the barns in May as we watch them joyfully frolic in the lush verdant fields of the Dales.
When the script calls for an animal birth – be it a calf, lamb or puppy – the production’s approach is always the same. It’s vital to preserve the dignity of the expectant animal at all times and to respect that mother nature will play a big role in the process. Our production vet, animal welfare advisor and animal handlers are key to that planning, and we operate a ‘closed set’ filming practice as we would with human actors in similar situations.
As you’d expect, things don’t always go to plan with births. For our very first calving experience on S1, we had two beautiful expectant Jersey cows due several days apart. We had a matching non-pregnant cow for the scripted action with the actors, plus a costume for our production vet, Andy Barrett, to wear in order to double for Nicholas Ralph.
In addition, there was an expertly crafted full-size cow rear end prosthetic section sculpted by Pauline Fowler so that the actor could do what a registered vet would do, and we could control the action and close-ups far away from the real animals. A custom-built delivery suite had been constructed by the art department in the barn on our holding farm, and a suitable lighting rig had been installed overhead for the DOP to simulate the lighting he was planning for the real scene involving the actors, which would be shot at a later date on location elsewhere with a cow double.
Our pregnant cows moved into this custom-built suite long in advance of their anticipated delivery date, and we carefully and slowly adjusted the lighting levels over time for them to become accustomed to the overhead film lights. A documentary camera crew was on 24-hour standby living in caravans at the holding farm in the two weeks leading up to the due date, poised to capture the very special moment when the calf made its appearance.
The calf made a hastier appearance than expected and the camera crew and our production vet got there with seconds to spare to capture it all. For those present who had never experienced an animal birth before, it was the most precious and privileged moment of the series.
Another very special moment was the birth of Bert and Anne Chapman’s border collie puppies in the S1 Christmas special. This sequence also required careful planning and a number of skilled crafts people to achieve the final result.
Several weeks before Betsy the collie’s due date, a designated puppy delivery room was set up on the production’s farm. A green screen was placed on the walls of the suite, along with a 1930s-style wooden whelping crate. This was larger than the one we would subsequently use as a prop in the finished scene on location, as it was important to allow Betsy as much room as she needed to have her litter in safety and comfort.
To respect Betsy’s dignity and welfare, a closed-set approach was put in place with a locked-off camera operated by a senior member of production, and animal handler Jill Clark was present to ensure the puppies were all safely delivered. Only Jill was permitted to handle the puppies, and she monitored Betsy’s health and welfare throughout delivery with our production vet on standby. For the final sequence involving the actors, VFX enabled the shots of the real puppies’ birth to be inserted into the sequence, which meant there was no requirement for Betsy and her new pups to travel to the remote farmhouse location, nor be filmed with the actors.
To truly test Fields’ advice about never working with children as well as animals, the producers cast Imogen Clawson, a 12-year-old first-time actor from Yorkshire, to play farmer’s daughter Jenny Alderson. Her biggest encounter during S1 (quite literally) was meeting Jester the shorthorn bull. Weighing in at more than a ton and the size of a Land Rover, being up close and hands on with Jester would test the mettle of even the toughest and most seasoned cast and crew members. Imogen wasn’t the least bit fazed by her first encounter. She happily scratched behind his ears and his neck and brushed him like she’d been around him her entire life.
No All Creatures season would be complete without a community event, and writer Debbie O’Malley’s script for episode five of S1 called for one of our biggest challenges to date – the Darrowby Show. This entailed a village agricultural show shot across two locations with cows, a bull, goats, chickens, ducks and donkeys, plus a pony-measuring contest. And last but certainly not least, a children’s pet show filmed in the studio set with nine children, a macaw, a parakeet, a canary, a rabbit, three kittens, two doves, two tortoises, two guinea pigs, a goldfish, a poodle, a dachshund and a polecat.
One of the biggest considerations when staging this type of sequence is that we cannot place ‘predator’ and ‘prey’ animals in close proximity to each other, so animal welfare advisor Jody Gordon was on hand to carefully decide which animal/child would be able to sit where to minimise distress for all the animals. The first AD said on the radio as they were about to turn over, ‘A room full of children and animals – what could possibly go wrong?’ Actually, nothing did.
From the makers of All Creatures Great & Small – which airs in the US on Masterpiece PBS – to WC Fields’ historic piece of advice, we’ll always be more than happy to work with all creatures great and small, whether they be animals, children or otherwise. With this incredible show now in its sixth season and loved by viewers of all ages around the world, we look forward to many more years of doing just that.
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