"All God’s Creatures" Are Celebrated in 'All Creatures Great & Small's Christmas Finale

Make sure you have some tissues handy! The touching and emotionally charged Christmas episode of All Creatures Great & Small Season 5 has once again been tacked on directly onto the season itself by Masterpiece to serve as a holiday-themed finale. It’s now December 1942, and the course of the war has changed with the entry of the United States and Japan. It’s going to be hard to celebrate with loved ones facing danger far away and the everyday hardships of life at home.

"As long as there’s a chance, I have to keep believing he’ll come home."

But our family at Skeldale House is determined to celebrate Christmas and Jimmy Herriot’s first birthday as best they can. Siegfried brings home a Christmas tree, and James the holly, and Audrey Hall negotiates a very special Christmas dinner. Traditionally, there would be a lavish Christmas tea with an elaborate fruit cake, but Audrey decides to save the sugar and dried fruit for Christmas Eve and Jimmy’s birthday party.

Audrey negotiates Christmas dinner with Ethel Taylor (Becky Simon), who needs clothing coupons for a family wedding. Not quite reminiscent of The Wire, the deal is negotiated on a street corner where Audrey makes a deal for a Christmas goose. Young Christopher Taylor (Owen Phillips) proudly shows off his pet snail and is intrigued to hear of Siegfried’s pet rat (his mother, less so). After taking her coupons to the shop, Audrey returns home to find a fox in a crate outside Skeldale House and isn’t surprised to learn Christopher is responsible.

In Doncaster, Tristan introduces his trainees to a mule — rarely seen in England but an important part of the war effort abroad — and quizzes them on the animal. “Give that man a coconut,” he exclaims when a correct answer about colic is given. However, his superior officer, Major Robertson (Adam Best), has another assignment for him. The army is to train a crack team of homing pigeons (invaluable messengers during WWI), and Tristan is to find birds. Yorkshire is apparently a hotbed of pigeon breeders, so it should be an easy task, or so one would think, and he’ll be home for Christmas.

Tristan begins his search for Yorkshire’s top pigeons with a visit to Enoch Sykes  (Duncan Preston) who is tending his birds in his backyard. He is not friendly and throws some pigeon debris at Tristan to make his point. But Tristan notices the pigeon poop has an unusual green tinge, which could be a parasite, and Enoch begins to take him seriously. He grudgingly allows Tristan to take a bird who’s been showing signs of ill health back to the office for testing.

Unfortunately, the pigeon is dead on arrival. James and Siegfried consult books and decide a pigeon post-mortem is in order, but it’s so delicate and fiddly they send the corpse off to the lab. Tristan doesn’t tell Enoch Sykes, who understood the bird would be kept overnight, and after a week, he phones the surgery. Tristan, nervous of Enoch’s reaction, pretends to be Siegfried on the phone, and hangs up. It’s not his finest hour. But when Enoch arrives at the surgery, Tristan has to come clean and tells him he’s waiting to hear from the lab. With commendable dignity, he tells Tristan he’s warned other breeders about him, and meanwhile, two other pigeons have died.

Siegfried examines Christopher’s fox, and finds it has mange. He highly disapproves of wild animals becoming pets but treats the fox on condition that Christopher agrees to release it back into the wild. Christopher agrees to let him go (much to his mother's relief, one assumes), and the fox is medicated.

But a radio announcement halts everything — HMS Repulse, the warship on which Audrey's son Edward serves, is hit off the coast of Malaysia in a Japanese aerial attack. Tristan rushes out to buy the newspaper, which reports half of the crew is lost; however, Edward’s name is not on the list. Audrey vividly remembers her son going off to war; to hide her shock and grief, she fights to carry on as usual, asking Siegfried to pick up the goose. But the Farnons and James and Helen wonder whether it’s appropriate to celebrate Christmas or Jimmie’s birthday and decide that Audrey shouldn’t have to handle the Christmas Eve-Birthday Party. Jimmie's birthday is moved to Holton Grange (Helen’s family home), while Christmas Day will be celebrated at Skeldale House.

The following day, Audrey is surprised to meet the fox again, lurking around the yard. She gives him some dog food as she fetches the mail. There's one from Edward, but it's dated December 2, a week before the bombing. She takes it out into Skeldale House’s old stable to read. The fox keeps her company as she reads Edward's request she visit injured fellow shipmate Paddy Grainger (Elliot Franz) with some of her homemade shortbread and a bottle of rum as a Christmas present.

But when Audrey brings the fox back into the house, Seigfried sees it has an infected bite and declares it will have to be euthanized. She throws an absolute fit, with all her misplaced emotions surfacing into a pitched battle over the life of the fox. Audrey identifies strongly with the fox, alone and suffering. Why should it be his decision if the fox lives or dies? Realizing this is not really about the animal in front of him or logic, Siegfried agrees to try to save the fox.

Tristan braces for another visit to Enoch’s pigeons, who unsurprisingly won’t let Tristan near the birds. However, Tristan notices the paint inside the pigeon’s cage is flaking off and recalls that, on his previous visit, Enoch’s back was troubling him. Tristan asks how he fed the pigeons if he couldn't bend over, and Enoch demonstrates by throwing a handful of seed into the cage, which brings down a shower of paint flakes. Lead paint flakes. Putting two and two together, Tristan treats the remaining pigeons for lead poisoning, solving the crisis. 

In appreciation, Enoch gives him six birds for the breeding program. Major Robertson is very pleased, but Tristan is sobered to hear that his last group of trainees have already been sent to Burma. They left him a photograph; “Give that man a coconut" is written on the back.

Audrey visits Paddy, as her son requested, and asks him about their work aboard the ship as they eat. But what she wants to know is what chance of survival Edward would have had if he were on duty during the bombing. Paddy sadly tells her if Edward was in the engine room when the ship was bombed, he would not have lived. Devastated, Audrey leaves in tears and takes up a vigil in the sable for her fox. Siegfried joins her; she admits she keeps visualizing Edward in the water or stranded on an island, but the thought that he may be dead is impossible. 

At Holton Grange, Helen has produced a rather lopsided cake for Jimmie’s Christmas Eve birthday party. It’s difficult to find birthday presents in the shops, so Helen’s dad regifts Helen’s (tiny) first Wellington boots and a farm set of animals acquired from someone at the pub. Meanwhile, James made a veterinarian play set, and the afternoon degenerates into men bickering over Jimmie's assumed future. (He has “farmer’s hands,” according to his grandfather.)

Christmas day brings the good news that Siegfried believes the fox will recover. Inside the house, Tristan answers a phone call and rushes out to find Audrey. The call is from Singapore, where Edward is in hospital, and she cries and laughs as she talks to him. However, in all the drama, Siegfried forgot to pick up the Christmas goose. It’s still a good spread (if heavy on veg); as usual, Siegfried wants to make a speech, but Audrey takes over, expressing her gratitude for the household’s kindness and understanding. As the others enjoy carols and games by the fireplace, Audrey watches the snow fall outside in a peaceful ending to Season 5.

All episodes of All Creatures Great & Small Seasons 1 through 5 are streaming on the PBS app and PBS Passport for members. Season 6 is already greenlit and expected out in 2026.