All Creatures Great and Small (franchise) "James Herriot", and are set in the fictional town of "Darrowby", based on a combination of Thirsk, Richmond, Leyburn and Middleham.. In the books James Herriot work with fellow veterinary surgeons, Siegfried and Tristan Farnon, based on real-life counterparts, "Donald Sinclair" and his brother "Brian Sinclair" respectively. Wight also used the name "Helen Alderson" for his wife, Joan Danbury. In America the books were collected as pairs into omnibus volumes, as the publisher felt they were too short to publish independently. The title chosen for the first book in the series "All Creatures Great and Small" (and subsequently one of
All Creatures Great and Small (TV series) is a widow after the death of her husband, Arthur.) With the amount of screen time to fill, the series quickly became much more of an ensemble show, developing all the characters considerably. In particular, the role of Tristan was significantly increased. This was partly because Christopher Timothy was injured in a car accident on Boxing Day 1977 during a fortnight break between the recording of "Out of Practice" and "Nothing Like Experience" in the first series. As a result, the actor was largely restricted to studio scenes, which meant that all the scenes involving location filming be rewritten and