'All Creatures Great and Small' Recap: Season 6 Episode 1

All Creatures Great and Small airs Sundays at 8:00 pm on WTTW and is available to stream. Recap the previous and following episodes and seasons.
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It is May, 1945. Several years have passed since we last visited Darrowby in All Creatures Great and Small. James and Helen now have two children: little Jimmy, who sometimes accompanies James on his veterinary calls, and Rosie. They’re currently living at Heston Grange, Helen’s family farm, because Skeldale House is chaos. Mrs. Hall left suddenly to care for her son Edward when he returned from the ongoing war with injuries. She wasn’t expecting to leave permanently, but then Edward got married and had a kid and Mrs. Hall found herself staying in Sunderland with her family.

The loss of the steadying force of his housekeeper and friend has led Siegfried to become absent-minded. The house is a mess, bills aren’t being paid, and Siegfried keeps misplacing his keys. Because Heston Grange doesn’t have a phone, James sometimes has to spend the night away from his family at Skeldale so that he can be on call. 

So when Tristan returns from Italy on leave and he and James find Siegfried’s pet rats running free, a small horse inside, and Siegfried trying to sneak a woman, Susan, out of the house without them noticing after he and she fell asleep on the couch, Tristan and James decide to ask Mrs. Hall to return – even though Helen has emphasized that they shouldn’t bother her. Siegfried even forgot to pick Tristan up from the train, or that he was even coming home.

James doesn’t want to directly ask Mrs. Hall for help, but Tristan comes right out with it: Siegfried has gone berserk without her.

Mrs. Hall returns to Skeldale for a few days while Edward is away, and finds that James and Tristan never informed Siegfried about her visit. She doesn’t reveal that they asked her to come, but her interaction with Siegfried is still awkward.

When she and Siegfried sit down for a game of Scrabble in the evening, it’s like old times again. Siegfried admits that he tried to hire a new housekeeper but none could live up to Mrs. Hall. He missed Edward’s wedding, to Mrs. Hall’s disappointment. She says that James mentioned issues with the practice, and Siegfried bristles, thinking that she sees him as a problem, and that’s why she returned. He leaves, offended.

When Mrs. Hall finds Susan at Skeldale in the morning, trying to return Siegfried’s glasses after a night out, Siegfried again gets upset as Mrs. Hall tries to help him make coffee. He asks Susan to leave with barely contained emotion, then explodes to Mrs. Hall that he can look after himself.

Of course there are still animals to treat amidst this domestic drama. As James delivers a lamb for the farmer Archie, one of Archie’s herding dogs starts barking: the other herder has fallen into barbed wire and injured herself. James gives Fly, the dog, stitches, but warns Archie that the twelve-year-old is suffering from arthritis and may not be able to work much longer. 

Archie says he can’t afford to keep a non-working dog, and Siegfried knows that telling a farmer their animal’s working life is over is often a death sentence. So when Siegfried visits Archie without telling James, he assures Archie that Fly can keep working with some painkillers, at least until she trains her pup to herd better.

When James finds out, he is upset with Siegfried: Archie might push Fly too hard. The peacekeeping Mrs. Hall suggests that James and Siegfried go to Archie together to check in..

Tristan spends his time, as usual, at the pub. He’s a bit more somber than usual, however, as he talks to his friend Maggie, who works there. She has her baby with her at the pub, and her husband is serving in Burma. Tristan wants to assure her that he will return safely – but of course he can’t. He has been promoted to captain, but won’t talk about his service – he even stopped writing to James.

For exercise, he runs up to the area’s World War I monument on a hill. He hears a dog and finds Archie’s younger dog wounded. Archie explains that he was out with his dogs herding his flock when the weather turned. He lost both dogs and the flock. He only did it because Siegfried told him Fly could keep working.

James, Siegfried, Tristan, and Archie all set out to search for the lost animals. Siegfried asks James if he told Mrs. Hall Siegfried was a problem, then backs away from having a real conversation about the practice’s issues in her absence. “She left us!” she tells James as he walks away to apologize to Archie. But the farmer admits he should have known better; he was too hard on his loyal companion of so many years. 

Just as they’re about to give up, the flock appears, herded by a wounded Fly. She protected them from a predator and is in bad shape. After James treats her, he suggests to Archie that she could retire and simply be his pet. 

Siegfried has meanwhile rushed off to find Mrs. Hall, who has decided it would be better if she left Skeldale again – despite the protestations of her dog Dash, who has cuddled up with his old companion, Skeldale’s Jess. Mrs. Hall cries as she separates Dash from Jess once again.

Nevertheless, she has gone to the train station. Siegfried calls to her as she prepares to board. He tells her he understands if she has to leave, but that he would like for her to return to her life at Skeldale. She wonders why everyone else at the train station is hugging, and Siegfried offhandedly tells her that the war in Europe has finally ended; the Germans have surrendered.

Back in Darrowby, everyone is celebrating. Tristan has donned his uniform, and glanced at a medal before stashing it away in a drawer. He made it through the war – but not everyone did.

Siegfried joins Mrs. Hall at the celebrations. She has decided to return – and it’s good to be back.