How ‘All Creatures Great and Small’ Shoots Live Animal Births: ‘They Keep Their Dignity’
variety.comWilson Chapman editor“All Creatures Great and Small” is a bucolic balm of a show. The hit British Channel 5 program, which just finished airing its second series on PBS through its Masterpiece anthology, is based on the series of semi-autobiographical novels James Alfred Wight wrote under the pen name James Herriot and follows the daily lives of a veterinary practice in the Yorkshire Dales in the 1930s.
Every episode features a veritable menagerie of adorable animals of different shapes and sizes, from cows and pigs to birds and fish to a pampered Pekingese named Tricki Woo.All of the veterinarian’s patients come from two animal handling companies: First Choice Animals, which supplies most of the farm animals and the domestic pets, and Atkinson Action Horses, which gives the show all the majestic steeds that populate the farms of Darrowby.
Both companies have storied histories working in TV and film, and both are family operations: First Choice Animals was started by Jill Clark forty years ago, and she ran it almost single-handedly until eight years ago when her son Dean joined the business.
Mark Atkinson, the founder of Atkinson Action Horses, was a dairy farmer who pivoted to training horses and has been providing horses and riders to movies and TV shows for over 25 years.
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