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) 1995, eight months after the author's death. In 2003, Timothy, Hardy, Carol Drinkwater and Lynda Bellingham appeared together on "Stars Reunited". Due to having other commitments, Peter Davison could not be present. Also briefly joining them, and host Dale Winton, on the couch was Jack Watkinson, MRCVS, the Yorkshire vet with whom Timothy worked with a week prior to the filming of the series. Timothy has stated that, for him, it was the best week of the whole series. "I did seriously feel, with all humility, that when I turned up to start filming: 'I'm sort of equipped for this.'"