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) and I wanted to do them," he explained in 2016. "I'd miss the second half of series 5 because of "A Very Peculiar Practice" and series 6 I missed because I was doing "Campion". I was incredibly lucky to move onto the things I did. There was no plan to it; it's just good fortune, being in the right place at the right time. But in the end, when I'd finished "Campion" and "A Very Peculiar Practice", "All Creatures" was still going and I never had any problem coming back." Helen Herriot (née Alderson) is played by Carol Drinkwater in