All Creatures Great and Small (TV series) that be wanted to cast the role. Sellars, instead, asked Timothy if he would accept the role of Tristan Farnon. "I had a wife, I had children, I had a mortgage to pay, and I wasn't working. So I said, 'No. It's Herriot or nothing.'" Timothy put everything on the line. "I got home one night, at about 9 o'clock. My wife was washing up in the kitchen. I walked into the kitchen and she said, without turning round, 'You've got the Herriot part.'" Timothy also stated that, after all of the roles had been cast except that of Herriot,
All Creatures Great and Small (TV series) the sixth series), before returning for the majority of the final series. Carol Drinkwater opted not to return to the series. "Bill Sellars was very, very cross with me for leaving. I think he thought I had been ungrateful. I'd given everything I could and I couldn't think where else I could take the role, because there was no more material. I wasn't leaving in any kind of spiteful thing; it had nothing to do with Chris and I, which is, of course, what everyone thought. Our split was all very amicable. Chris and I, and his wife Annie, are