'All Creatures Great and Small' Recap: Season 5 Episode 4
Daniel Hautzinger
February 2, 2025

All Creatures Great and Small airs Sundays at 8:00 pm on WTTW is available to stream. Recap the previous and following episodes.
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Richard is returning from London after taking his exams, but there’s now someone else sleeping in his room: Tristan. Their first meeting is awkward, as the two men are polar opposites. Richard doesn’t like cricket or drinking much, preferring cribbage and the culturing of bacteria – leading Tristan to label him a killjoy.
Tristan sets off for the pub by himself and returns home late, drunk. He stumbles into his room and into bed – where Richard is sleeping. The two young men argue, waking Siegfried, who leaves them to figure out who gets to sleep in the bed and who in the cupboard.
The next morning, Mrs. Hall suggests to Siegfried that Tristan is feeling left out, but Siegfried dismisses her concern and leaves the young men to resolve their issues on their own. But they’re even fighting over the last piece of toast, so Mrs. Hall decides to take matters into her own hands. She sends Tristan to join Richard in searching for a rogue exotic snake that has been reported at Pumphrey Manor, which has been requisitioned as a hospital for convalescent soldiers.
While they’re gone, she tries to convince Siegfried to put one of them up in a room in town, but he points out that Tristan was fine sharing a room with James. So Mrs. Hall sets about making the situation more comfortable, calling Mr. Bosworth to acquire a donated, unused mattress. She makes Siegfried carry it upstairs to the cupboard.
After speaking to the matron running the hospital in Pumphrey Manor, Tristan believes the snake, which she hasn’t actually seen, is just a joke made up by the soldiers for entertainment. He sets off to find a place to nap while Richard scours the estate for the snake.
Tristan runs into Mrs. Pumphrey herself – she’s looking for one of her paintings, but everything has been moved around. When she hears that there might be a snake in the building, she becomes concerned for her dog Tricki-Woo, and she and Tristan split up to find him.
Richard has already done so, and struck up a conversation with Harry, the soldier who is treating and petting Tricki on his lap in the library. Harry tells Richard that every soldier is excited to come home, no matter what adventures they have had, and Richard thinks of Tristan. Tristan spots them from the doorway and waits for a minute but interrupts when he hears Richard ask Harry how he was injured - a faux pas.
Tricki runs off as they argue and they set off in pursuit. They corner the dog in an out of the way room and Tristan shuts the door to prevent escape until Richard grabs Tricki. But when they try to leave, the doorknob comes off. They’re stuck.
James is also a bit stuck, confused by the lack of progress in his treatment of a cow. He believes one of Sid Crabtree’s cows isn’t eating because of indigestion from overeating, but understands that Crabtree is over-cautious after the outbreak of brucellosis on his farm the previous year.
But the cow is still not doing better after a day of treatment and James worries about the Crabtrees, so he visits again. The postman Oakley passes by and says the cow would be cured by some galloping. James tells Sid that’s just an old, ineffectual treatment. He’ll flush the cow out instead.
But when he returns home, he’s still anxious about the Crabtrees. Helen tells him to give the cow a gallop, just to put Sid’s mind at ease. James likes the idea of proving Oakley wrong. He sets off to see the cow again, and Helen, worried about her husband, eventually follows.
Oakley again passes by and offers to gallop the cow. James leaves it up to Sid, who accepts. After the exercise, James examines the cow and is surprised to see it improving – but he insists to Sid that the improvement is from his flushing, and that the galloping just had good timing. Sid kindly tells James he appreciates the help.
As James and Helen leave the farm, Sid’s dog Shep appears out of nowhere to bark at James, startling him – and not for the first time. James yells at the dog, to Helen’s surprise. She insists that they go for a drink – Mrs. Hall is watching Jimmy.
At the pub, she asks James what’s wrong. He says that both Sid and Oakley told him he was lucky to come down with brucellosis, saving him from the war, but he’s not so sure. After all, training flights are also dangerous – his crew was shot down in one. Helen is surprised James hasn’t told her this, and guesses that this is what was weighing on him.
They leave and return to the Crabtree farm with some meat for Shep. The dog doesn’t want it – but he does delight James by barking at and scaring Oakley as he walks past.
As Richard and Tristan fume at being stuck in a room together, waiting for someone to pass by and free them, Richard spots the snake. It’s a python, and it’s in the room with them. Richard is fascinated; Tristan is terrified. Forced to spend time together, they slowly warm to each other and mutually apologize. Richard offers to find somewhere else to stay so Tristan can have his room back. But he mentions that he grew up in boarding school, and so has enjoyed finally having a place where he could put down roots. Tristan tells him he should stay at Skeldale, then; they can share the room.
Mrs. Pumphrey eventually finds them as they shout for help. She, too, decides to make up after a fight, having argued with the overworked and exhausted matron about the use of her house. And the matron is also ready to make amends: she has found the painting for which Mrs. Pumphrey was searching. It’s a view of where she grew up, painted by her father; it helps her feel at home, even if she’s living in a cottage to make way for the soldiers.
Richard tells Tristan that their shared room will make a great home for the python, which they’re bringing back to the surgery. Tristan quickly makes a deal with him: he can have the bed if the python stays out of their room. They shake on it.
Richard was joking about the snake, but has won himself the bed. Tristan accepts the arrangement, but good-naturedly assures Richard that he’ll find a way to get the bed back.