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Everything's grand as All Creatures Great and Small continues to triumph

Mark Noble, Ella Bruccoleri and Samuel West in All Creatures Great and Small - Playground Television
Mark Noble, Ella Bruccoleri and Samuel West in All Creatures Great and Small - Playground Television

Dramas frequently boast in their publicity blurb of an “explosive finale”, which is usually shorthand for a blazing row, a blurted secret, or sometimes a gunshot. All Creatures Great and Small (Channel 5) meant it more literally, not to mention fragrantly. A cow’s blocked stomach burst spectacularly, spattering bystanders with a substance that doesn’t bear thinking about too much.

The handsomely made remake of the veterinary favourite has settled into its second series with romance in the crisp, clean Yorkshire air. And, surprisingly, it was for all four residents of Skeldale House.

James Herriot (Nicholas Ralph) tentatively asked Helen Alderson (Rachel Shenton) to the local spring dance. Cue sweet scenes of clumsy footwork and fumbling flirtation, set to a swing band at the village hall. Strictly Come Vetting, if you will. Having received a tempting job offer from back home in Glasgow, our hero needed to find something – or someone – worth staying in Darrowby for. A fond peck on the cheek from Helen should suffice.

Endearingly hapless Tristan Farnon (Callum Woodhouse, essentially reprising his character from The Durrells, but doing it impeccably) wooed a farmer’s daughter by accidentally lancing the hematoma of her father’s prize pig, Buttercup. Which isn’t a sentence one types terribly often. When gentlemanly Gerald Hammond (Will Thorp) brought his injured dog into the surgery, he struck up a promising rapport with housekeeper and all-round force of nature Mrs Hall (Anna Madeley).

Even irascible old Siegfried Farnon (Samuel West) succumbed to the amorous advances of the recently separated Diana Brompton (a delicious turn from the reliably excellent Dorothy Atkinson, aka Pauline from Mum). As Mrs Hall drily noted: “If that woman was any more forward, she’d be here yesterday.”

Rachel Shenton appears as Helen Alderson in All Creatures Great and Small - Playground Television
Rachel Shenton appears as Helen Alderson in All Creatures Great and Small - Playground Television

This was a toe-wriggling treat of an hour which combined undemanding drama with slapstick comedy, ravishing Dales scenery and a little Latin for good measure. The episode was titled “Semper Progrediens”, which, as any amateur classicist knows, means “always progressing”. So it proved, as the gentle plot edged forward just enough.

It was the kind of sedately paced period piece where a fixed grandfather clock or a forgotten sugar bowl acquire poignant significance. In the absence of Mrs Pumphrey’s pampered Pekingese, Tricki Woo, Jess the Skeldale dog was a waggy scene-stealer. Apparently a viewer wrote to West during the debut series, complaining that Siegfried wasn’t using a tea strainer. He put that right here. You can put your pen away now, Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells.

Then came that volcanic climax, as Colonel Merrick (James Fleet) got a tad too close to Siegfried’s bovine surgical procedure. The subsequent mess might take some shifting from the bumptious landowner’s tweeds.

By rights, this superbly crafted, soothingly cosy series should air on BBC One. It cries out to alternate with Call the Midwife in the 8pm-on-Sundays slot. The Corporation inexplicably turned it down and it's instead become a sizable hit for the increasingly canny Channel 5. As Herriot concluded contentedly in front of a roaring fire: “Everything’s grand.”