The Enchanted Realism of "All Creatures Great and Small"

An Essay on Television's Best Show

The updated PBS Masterpiece show “All Creatures Great and Small” is the best show on television. I know some of you out there agree. That’s not to pigeonhole you; “All Creatures” may be produced by Masterpiece, but it has fans from across the demographic spectrum. It’s not solely for older types; it’s not merely for families; it’s not only for Anglophiles. It’s for everyone, and it has an audience to match.

“All Creatures” is popular because, in the simplest terms, it is a beautifully made show. (You can buy whole seasons here.) The pacing is measured. The cinematography is lovely. The script doesn’t waste a word. The music is first-rate, and a good bit better than a normal score for a TV show. The plots are compelling, but not uncontained, so the younger family members can stay in the room. The scenes of care for animals remind us that every creature is God-made, no matter how tiny or ordinary.

This last point is important. “All Creatures” is, at base, a study in enchanted realism. It portrays the difficulties of real life, that is, but with hope, humor, an eye to beauty, and a sense of the grandeur of the ordinary. It shows us that the “big life” is bound up with the small things, not what is flashy or exciting (most days).

Beyond this, there are two strengths of “All Creatures” that stand out to me. In what follows, I will unfold them, making reference to ministry and the Christian life as I go.

First, the Beauty of Care as a Craft

“All Creatures” is, at base, a study of craft—the craft of animal care. The practitioners are Siegfried Farnon, James Herriott, and Tristan Farnon. To varying degrees of experience, these men care for creatures with kindness, subtlety, and personal investment. They dress like gentlemen; they carry themselves with dignity; yet they readily put on their high boots, wade into mud, and help birth a young calf after many hours of exhausting effort.

These veterinarians have a craft of care. In this way, they remind me of pastors—at least, pastors as they are called to be. Siegried and James in particular bring a balance of technical knowledge, informed wisdom, a gentle touch, and a firm backbone to their vocation. They do not help animals to draw a paycheck. They genuinely love helping animals, and so they approach their daily work as if it is a privilege to do.

This mindset speaks in a profound way to the character of a congregational shepherd. Pastors should not be men who merely like to preach on Sunday morning, and make all the big decisions, and get thanked by church members. Pastors should exercise a craft of care. They should genuinely like the work of shepherding souls. If they don’t, they should leave the ministry, finding a job that better suits them.

That sobering word aside, we need a recovery of the pastoral vocation today. We need men who, in serving as elders, apply technical knowledge, informed wisdom, a gentle touch, and a firm backbone to their task. We need men to see the work of shepherding not as a job, but as a craft. The pastoral vocation is invested with great dignity and great importance. We need men who tenderly care for the sheep, and men who guard the flock.

I’ll say one final word here. It is particularly rich to watch Siegfried do his work. He is excellent at his job. He sets a high bar for his associates. He attacks his duties with alacrity. He pursues excellence in all that he does. Yet when it comes time to handle a troubled animal, jittery and jumpy, he slows things down. He quietly soothes the frightened creature, relaxing it until he can administer the care it needs.

This too is a crucial part of pastoral work. Pastors must be those who calm the sheep, enabling them to recover calmness and, in due course, a God-centered perspective on their trials. Beyond pastoring, tenderness is what men must minister throughout their life. As husbands, we must listen well to our wives, offering understanding in troubled situations. As fathers, we must draw near to our children, holding them in our arms, hearing them out, calming them in love. The world is cold, but our embrace is warm.

We need men who are tough, to be sure. But in equal measure, we need men who are tender. There is no daylight between these two essential qualities of men; we follow the Savior, after all, who perfectly blended and embodied them (Matthew 18:2-5; John 2:13-17). It is his strength, and equally his tender love, that will soon heal the world, leaving it so restored, so reconstituted, so eschatologically perfect that no one will be able to un-heal it.

Second, the Beauty of Relational Perseverance

There is a second major strength that I find in “All Creatures”: its portrait of persevering commitment. The characters in the show each have their faults, challenges, struggles, and sins. There are various plot devices and twists in each episode, but navigating the fallen humanity of each character makes up the central drama of the show.

In my needfully humble judgment, this is what makes “All Creatures” the best show on television. It does not spike the arc of each episode, putting its characters into increasingly ridiculous situations in order to try and hold the audience’s attention. Instead, “All Creatures” serves up calmer drama, namely, the drama of everyday life in a spoiled realm. Fights happen; tempers flare; feelings get hurt; trials strike; friends leave; trusted voices disappoint.

Such events constitute the real drama of our days. Our normal battle with sin is not carried out on far-flung battlefields; our normal battle with sin—ours and everyone else’s—takes place in a much quieter register. But this register is, quite simply, real life. Siegfried and Tristan love each other, but they have a lot of historical baggage. Their crusty brotherly love does not wipe away their frustrations with one another; instead, their entrenched struggles flare time and again in an ongoing dance of needless pique, then fiery recriminations, then an icy standoff, then halting reconciliation.

As a viewer, we can roll our eyes at this silliness. But in truth, this kind of cycle bedevils all of us in some form. So too do life’s bitter disappointments play on us and tug at us. We think of Mrs. Hall here. Her son Edward is estranged from her (a storyline that develops over the course of the four seasons of the show thus far). Edward got into trouble in Mrs. Hall’s previous housekeeping job, and Mrs. Hall did not sweep his bad behavior away when it was found out. Hence Edward’s distance.

Stoic maxims and average self-help would tell Mrs. Hall to simply carry on with a smile. That certainly fits British culture of the era the show portrays. No doubt we all must soldier on amidst much hardship, this is true. But what “All Creatures” does well is display the internal battle within Mrs. Hall’s soul. She does persevere, she does work hard, and she does try to focus on what is before her. But the battle is not fully winnable—not for her, and not for many of us in our weakness.

James and Helen do not fight the same battles. Their relationship is relatively strong. But “All Creatures” does not shy away from a realistic portrait of marriage. James and Helen love one another fiercely, but in the course of their young union, they misunderstand each other, communicate poorly, and hit relational snags. Beyond this, life throws a lot at them that they could not anticipate, and they end up fighting to hold things together.

In sum, the five major characters of “All Creatures” are each a finely-honed individual. None of them are perfect; all of them have flaws; they all fight realistic battles. Though the show is not a Christian show in explicit form, it overlaps significantly with a Christian vision of life in a fallen world. In fact, I think “All Creatures” presents this vision more honestly than Christians sometimes do.

What do I mean? I mean this: sometimes Christians focus a great deal on how bad sin is, but fail to be honest about how prevalent it is. Preachers can scorch sin to smithereens from an Olympian pulpit, but leave their people with very little practical guidance on how to wage war on sin. The only real guidance given in some idealistic contexts is this: don’t sin. If you do sin, furthermore, you’re a miserable worm—and you may very well not even be a Christian.

It’s right to teach Christians to hate their sin. Further, we must all watch ourselves closely, knowing that people really do deceive themselves spiritually. However, the Reformed and conservative evangelical pulpit could use a good dose of what we could call biblical realism. Functional perfectionism is simply not an option for creatures like us, sadly. Because of this, we need shepherds who get into the mud with their sheep, and help them work out their salvation day by day.

When pastors do this, and when ordinary Christians do this with one another, we inhabit real life together. We’re not living in a fantasy Christian world where no one ever sins. Much as we yearn for the eradication of evil, we are not there yet. Pretending otherwise does no one any good. Far better to be ruggedly biblical on this count, and handle real failings and real recurring weaknesses with real mercy and real grace.

What We Learn from Peter and Jesus About Commitment

This is what Scripture equips us to do, in truth. Think of Peter as one example. Peter hears both the highest praise and the fiercest rebuke from his Savior. He confesses that Jesus is the Christ, and is praised. What words these are: Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah (Matthew 16:17). Imagine hearing that affirmation from Christ himself!

But shortly thereafter, Peter plunges downward. Feeling his oats, he beseeches Jesus to start thinking positive and to drop all the negative talk about dying on the cross. For his efforts, he is called nothing less than “Satan” in response (Matthew 16:23). This all occurs in the span of six verses of Matthew’s Gospel. That has to be a record for going from “strongest praise” to “fieriest rebuke” in history.

Cheekiness aside, this little episode in Peter’s tumultuous life is par for his course. But in noting this, we should not chuckle at Peter. You and I are not so different from Peter, alas. We too are up and down. We too are inconsistent. We too trip ourselves up, and can’t get out of our own way. We too get it right only to get it badly wrong.

This is why we too need a Savior who pastors us in the kindest, most patient way possible. We see Jesus do so in John 21:15-19. After Peter betrayed Jesus, denying him three times in Jesus’ hour of greatest need, Peter did not go to Jesus to reconcile with him. Peter did not offer repentance to his Savior and King. No, the Savior and King went to Peter.

So too does Jesus go to us in our ruination and disgrace, and restore us. Jesus loves to do this; it’s not a distraction for him. He’s not annoyed by such costly investment; he came to earth for just this sort of deep spiritual work. Jesus found Peter. Jesus reengaged Peter. Jesus communicated, effectively, forgiveness and love to Peter. And then Jesus sent Peter back out to the mission.

This is the character of Jesus. In all this, we see that God’s grace is amazing not simply in Peter’s salvation, but in Peter’s sanctification. The Christian needs grace just as much to remain a Christian as he does when he first crosses the line of belief. We get things wrong and must regularly say, I am Peter. But then we perk up, and say this as well: But he is Jesus.

Jesus came to earth for just this kind of mess. Jesus knows our frailty. Jesus knows our fickleness. Jesus wants to help us. This is his work; this is his preoccupation; this is what he does, and does well. Jesus is not bothered by us; Jesus loves us and wants to stay close to us. Jesus will never leave us nor forsake us.

Conclusion

All this relates to a show from PBS Masterpiece because the characters of “All Creatures” embody real strengths and weaknesses. The veterinarians work hard and with excellence, viewing their labor as cultivation of their craft. They are not in a rush; they do what has been called “deep work,” and they remind us to do “deep ministry” by God’s power.

Besides the show’s focus on craft, we learn much from “All Creatures” about practicing relational perseverance with one another. In their own imperfect ways, the lead characters remind us to persevere with those we love. We should not simply say “I love you” to our family members; that’s simple enough to do. We should do the harder work: we should endure their failings, tolerate their weird habits, bear with their battles, and forgive their transgressions.

They need grace; we need grace. Praise God, in Christ, we have it.

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(Image: PBS Masterpiece)