'All Creatures Great and Small' Recap: Season 5 Episode 5

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 can’t wait for the mail: there’s a package of goat droppings coming for him. He has instituted a program to preemptively test the feces of animals to catch disease before it manifests. He and Siegfried eagerly examine the droppings before breakfast and determine that the goats at the Grantley estate are developing roundworm. Richard and Siegfried will head to the estate and deploy their new worming gun – after breakfast, of course.

It’s during that meal that Richard receives even better mail: his exam results. He passed with outstanding distinction. Now that he has qualified to be a veterinarian, Siegfried will have to formally offer him a job if he wants to stay at Skeldale.

Outstanding distinction in exams means Richard has also won the Warner Prize, which comes with a research position in London, as Siegfried recalls while driving with Richard to the Grantley estate. Richard admits that he was offered the position, but he wants to do his part in the war effort by serving agricultural animals, and so will refuse the research opportunity in order to stay in Yorkshire. Siegfried is delighted.

He’d be even more happy if Richard came to him for romantic advice, but Richard trusts Tristan in that field more – he’s never seen Siegfried with a girlfriend. Richard has realized he has feelings for Jenny’s friend Doris, but he’s horribly awkward with her and would like some help.

At the Grantley estate, Richard finally gets to observe Siegfried around a woman he finds attractive. Miss Grantley lived for decades in Persia, where she worked as an archaeologist, but has returned to run the family estate while her brother is in London. When Siegfried solves a mystery involving two of her goats and their itchiness after treating the whole population for roundworm, Richard is sure to tactlessly talk Siegfried up in front of Grantley – to Siegfried’s embarrassment.

Grantley invites them inside for coffee, and Richard pages through a book in her library while she and Siegfried chat. Like Siegfried, she has lost a spouse. She’s writing a book based on her research, and Siegfried asks to read the manuscript, to her delight. It also ensures another meeting between them, to discuss the book.

The conversation makes Siegfried realize that life is full of opportunities that might not come again, so he urges Richard to consider accepting the prize after all. The war will end and Richard’s life will continue, and the prize is an outstanding chance that might not be available later. Plus, research is also important to the country. But Richard has made up his mind.

While Richard and Siegfried are at the Grantley estate, James covers the surgery back at Skeldale. He treats a ferret brought in by Doris – she’s raising ferrets as rat catchers as she works on Danby’s farm. The ferret needs an operation, so James tells Doris to return in the afternoon. But Helen asks Doris to stay for a cup of tea so that she can commiserate about Danby, who refuses to give the city girl Doris much instruction, despite her willingness to work.

James is a bit hungover, since he went out drinking with Tristan – who wants to go out again tonight. James reluctantly agrees, even though he wants to rest and spend some time with Jimmy. He’s not sure how long Tristan will be around before being redeployed.

But Tristan is even demanding James’ attention during the day, in an effort to procrastinate in writing a lecture for the training of troops tomorrow. James has his own tasks in addition to minding the surgery, like fixing Jimmy’s playpen, but nevertheless takes a break to practice some cricket with Tristan. James finally tells Tristan that he needs some recuperation time, as well as time with Jimmy; he’ll be staying in tonight. That doesn’t stop him from a few more rounds of bowling, to put off fixing the playpen.

Mrs. Hall has her own distraction from her work. Mr. Bosworth comes to her in agitation: an unidentified object fell on a field last night. Two wardens need to be present to assess the situation – and it could be a bomb. Mrs. Hall quickly realizes that it’s a supply crate from a British plane – James has said they are sometimes jettisoned if a plane is running low on fuel. But Bosworth refuses to believe there isn’t still some danger.

Mrs. Hall tells him to stop being absurd – she has work to do back at Skeldale.

Back there, she overhears Doris say that she used strychnine to poison rats at Danby’s before she got the ferrets. Bosworth’s dog died of strychnine poisoning, and Bosworth was at Danby’s farm to try to get them to paint their cows with stripes to be visible at night. Mrs. Hall wonders if Doris buried the poisoned rat corpses deep enough to prevent animals from digging them up to eat them – but Danby didn’t give her any guidance. The women go to check Danby’s farm and find the rat corpses unearthed and eaten, and a dead fox nearby.

Helen lays into Danby while Mrs. Hall tells Doris that she’ll take on the burden of informing Bosworth of the cause of his beloved dog’s death. Bosworth is initially furious, but then calms and says he doesn’t want his dog causing Doris any misery by making her feel any guiltier. At least he can now stop blaming himself.

He still misses his dog; its absence makes him more prickly around other people. He’s embarrassed by his conduct around the unidentified object in the field, and Mrs. Hall also apologizes for losing her temper with him then. She, too, is affected by an absence: her son Edward’s, as he fights in the war. She cries a little and Bosworth consoles her.

Mrs. Hall has had an insight into Richard: she tells Siegfried that his lack of a steady home growing up might play into his decision to refuse the Warner prize and stay at Skeldale. Tristan helps address this by telling Richard, who’s struggling to write his refusal letter, that there was a time when he couldn’t imagine ever leaving Skeldale. Siegfried does his part by telling Richard that there will always be a place for him at Skeldale – and not just as a vet.

Richard decides to accept the prize. He’ll head off to London in ten days. Tristan suggests a celebratory drink, and everyone joins them while James stays behind to watch Jimmy in his newly fixed playpen. Before he heads to the pub, Richard calls Doris and invites her to join them. She accepts.