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) Davison, who plays Siegfried's boyish younger brother, Tristan (affectionately called "Mister Tristan" by housekeeper Edna Hall), whose character was based on Brian Sinclair. "One afternoon, my agent rang to ask how I felt about doing a small part at Birmingham repertory theatre, where Peter Farago, whom I'd worked with in Edinburgh, had taken over as artistic director," recalled Davison. "I asked how long it ran for, which was only a few weeks. This was a difficult one. I wasn't doing anything else but a few lines in Birmingham didn't sound particularly appetising. 'What do you think?' I asked. 'Well, it's