'All Creatures Great & Small's Regular Season Finale Is a Bittersweet "Glass Half Full"

This episode of All Creatures Great & Small was the original Season 5 finale in the U.K., but on this side of the pond, it's the penultimate episode with the Christmas Special airing next week. Siegfried, somewhat worse for wear after worming a 900# sow, returns to Skeldale House, where Audrey Hall tactfully asks if it is just mud – or worse. James and Mrs. Pumphrey hover over Pekinese Tricky Woo in the surgery, waiting for him to produce a cough. The dog doesn’t oblige, but James encourages her to return if worried.

Last week, Siegfried met the glamorous Lady of the Goats, Miss Grantley, but it doesn’t look likely that the romance will blossom. He calls and finds she’s not home and worries that the copy of her memoirs she lent him has disappeared. Tristan is lounging on the sofa with a crossword, and Siegfried immediately assumes, as usual, that he’s being lazy. In fact, he’s finished marking course papers and is taking a break despite Siegfried’s habitual disapproval. Siegfried finds Miss Grantley’s work on the floor next to the sofa, with a ring from a carelessly placed cuppa on the cover.

Helen and the baby return from the Victory Garden with a bumper crop of ripe strawberries and ration coupons for sugar from the neighbor; jam-making can officially begin. She discovers James unexpectedly asleep upstairs, but he wakes to join everyone in the kitchen, where Siegfried and Tristan bicker over whose turn it is to buy gas for the car and with whose coupons. Since Richard Carmody’s departure for a brilliant research career in London has left them short-handed, Siegfried persuades Tristan to accompany him on calls the next day. Helen, a notoriously bad cook, offers to help with the jam, but her offer is declined.