PBS Announces 'All Creatures Great & Small' Season 6 Premiere Date

One of the worst aspects of the streaming revolution was Netflix's determination to upend the traditional TV schedule, believing that people did not want to be forced into appointment television or made to wait on weekly installments, effectively destroying one of the few remaining cultural traditions that cut across all walks of life. It was also completely wrongheaded; one of the best aspects of the Disney+ launch was that it reminded everyone that the model is quite popular, and that viewers love a weekly series they can watch together as a family. Thankfully, public broadcasting has never been one to jump on the latest bandwagon trends and has never wavered from the old linear schedule, including its most successful spot in the calendar, Downton Abbey's old January berth.

For PBS fans, that means we always have a sense of when shows will typically arrive. Call the Midwife, for example, has premiered like clockwork in mid-March for over a decade, and most major Masterpiece shows that promise to debut in "Spring of (upcoming year)" mean "alongside Call the Midwife." The same holds for "Autumn debuts," which almost always mean October, in the same slot where Poldark used to live. And ever since its premiere in the doldrums of 2021, All Creatures Great & Small has been a little slice of comfort every January.

Therefore, the announcement that All Creatures Season 6 would debut on the second Sunday of January 2026 wasn't exactly news, but rather a confirmation of what viewers already knew. However, it is nice to have the exact start date, since this not only confirms All Creatures, but also will be the debut date for whichever other series Masterpiece will air alongside it. (The past few years, that has been Miss Scarlet, both with and without The Duke.)