'All Creatures Great And Small' showrunner Ben Vanstone

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

NPR

Society & Culture

4.5 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 5 February 2021

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

All Creatures Great and Small tells the story of a Scottish veterinarian who moves out to the English countryside. It started as a book series written under the pen name James Herriot. In each chapter, Herriot drives around the Yorkshire Dales in an old car, from farm to farm, appointment to appointment. He treats horses, cows and dogs in neighboring villages. In the '70s and '80s, the books became a TV series of the same name on the BBC. All Creatures set in the '30s, between the wars. It's a quiet series – gentle, funny and bursting with love. There's a brand new television series based on the book. We talk about the latest reiteration with Ben Vanstone, writer and showrunner who created the reboot. There's quite a few animals on the show, but who's Ben's favorite? All that and so much more on the latest episode.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.
0:10.0	It's Bullseye, I'm Jesse Thorn.
0:21.8	It started as a book or books.
0:24.9	A series of memoirs written under the pen name James Harriet.
0:29.5	The first of them was called All Creatures Great and Small.
0:33.1	They tell the story of a Scottish veterinarian who moves out to the English countryside,
0:38.2	Yorkshire Dales specifically.
0:40.8	It's set in the 1930s between the wars.
0:44.0	In every chapter Harriet drives around the Dales in a junky old car from farm to farm
0:49.4	appointment to appointment.
0:51.3	He treats horses, cows, dogs.
0:54.9	And it's a book with a special kind of magic.
0:58.3	Through Harriet you get to know the farmers, quiet, reserved, gentle.
1:03.3	You take in the details of their homes and the landscape.
1:07.1	That book, the whole series, are among my favorite reads.
1:10.7	And they inspired several movies and in the 1970s and 80s a TV series called All Creatures
1:17.0	Great and Small on the BBC.
1:19.7	Maybe you hadn't heard of it over here in the States.
1:22.0	It was a classic in the UK and a success on PBS.
1:26.3	Today, there's a brand new series based on the book.
1:29.1	It premiered on Channel 5 in the UK last year, where it was a huge smash.
1:33.9	It just made its debut on PBS here in the US.
	...

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