“All Creatures Great and Small” Season 7 Is Bringing Everyone Home: See First Look Images and Airdate

The beloved series will return to MASTERPIECE PBS on January 17, 2027, with a rival veterinarian and a hopeful new chapter for Skeldale House.

Nicholas Ralph as James Herriot and Rachel Shenton as Helen Herriot in Season 7 of All Creatures Great and Small. Photo courtesy of MASTERPIECE.

After years of uncertainty and war, the doors of Skeldale House are opening once again! 

MASTERPIECE PBS has announced today that All Creatures Great and Small will return for its seventh season on January 17, 2027. The new season brings viewers back to the idyllic Yorkshire Dales in 1946, where the war has finally ended, and the beloved residents of Darrowby must learn how to build a life in a changing world.

Based on James Herriot's beloved books, and reimagined from the 1978–1990 TV adaptation, All Creatures Great and Small traces the life of a rural veterinarian working in the Yorkshire Dales during the 1930s and 1940s.

First-look images released by MASTERPIECE, shown here, reveal the return of Nicholas Ralph as James Herriot, Rachel Shenton as Helen Herriot, Samuel West as Siegfried Farnon, Anna Madeley as Mrs. Hall, and Callum Woodhouse as Tristan Farnon.

Caolan McCarthy joins Season 7 of All Creatures Great and Small as rival veterinarian Granville Bennett, alongside Samuel West returning as Siegfried Farnon, Callum Woodhouse returning as Tristan Farnon, and Nicholas Ralph returning as James Herriot. Photo courtesy of MASTERPIECE.

Patricia Hodge will also return as Mrs. Pumphrey, accompanied, of course, by her cherished Pekingese Tricki. Tony Pitts reprises his role as Helen’s father Richard, while Imogen Clawson returns as her sister Jenny. Maimie McCoy, Gaia Wise, and Mollie Winnard will once again appear as Dorothy, Charlotte, and Maggie.

This season, audiences will see how life after the war does not mean a simple return to life as Darrowby knew it.

The veterinary team is reunited in Season 7 of All Creatures Great and Small, set in the Yorkshire Dales in 1946. Photo courtesy of MASTERPIECE.

What will happen in Season 7?

James is eager to explore new developments in veterinary medicine, while the arrival of a rival veterinarian threatens to unsettle the familiar rhythm of the Dales. Actor Caolan McCarthy, known for Belfast and the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Cyrano de Bergerac, will join the cast as the newly arrived Granville Bennett.

This conflict promises to offer an intriguing direction for a series that has uniquely been more focused on themes of stewardship and duty than ambition. James’s vocation has never been portrayed as exclusively a path to professional success but as work that binds him to particular people, animals, and places. New knowledge may improve that work, but competition this season may test whether progress can be welcomed without sacrificing loyalty and trust.

That tension feels especially fitting for a season set in 1946.

Life returns to normal around the table in Season 7 of All Creatures Great and Small. Photo courtesy of MASTERPIECE.

The war may now be over, but peace won’t instantly restore the conflict. This season will pertinently wrestle with how new technologies and ideas that promise a better future apply to the community, even while the old ways continue to offer stability.

This may be precisely why All Creatures Great and Small continues to resonate with modern audiences. Most television treats ordinary life as something a character must escape before the real story can begin, but Darrowby treats ordinary life as the main story.

Our favorite moments, like a veterinary call, a meal shared at the kitchen table, a disagreement between brothers, or a neighbor arriving at the door, may appear inconsequential.

Taken together, however, these small acts form a memorable community and remind viewers that a good life is not built through performative ambition, but through the repeated decision to continue to steward what has been entrusted to us.

Gaia Wise returns as Charlotte Beuvoir and Callum Woodhouse returns as Tristian Farnon in Season 7 of All Creatures Great and Small. Photo courtesy of MASTERPIECE.

Season 7’s return to a full Skeldale House brings back the moral center of the series. It is all at once a home, workplace, refuge, and gathering place. With different generations and personalities who live under one roof, often irritating one another, they have to learn to share burdens and remain faithful to one another. Part of us feels this is how life is really supposed to be. 

That may also be why the series’ beauty never feels entirely escapist, although it certainly feels that way. The iconic stone walls, green hills, country kitchens, and familiar village faces certainly offer relief from the ugliness and agitation of much contemporary entertainment accompanied by Netflix lighting and AI-generated scripts.

Darrowby’s appeal, however, goes deeper than nostalgia or reaction, as beauty emerges from the deep sense of belonging felt in a landscape generations have tended, with timeless lessons and traditions that hold a community together when the wider world becomes uncertain.

A full Skeldale House once again in Season 7 of All Creatures Great and Small. Photo courtesy of MASTERPIECE.

The first six seasons reminded viewers that caring for something outside ourselves is not a burden, but ennobling. 

Season 7 may show us what that stewardship makes possible: renewal.

In a culture that continually promises audiences that reinvention is the answer to every disappointment, All Creatures Great and Small offers something more enduring. We do not always need to abandon our lives and start over, but sometimes we simply need to return, repair what has been strained, welcome people back to the table, and faithfully build from what remains.

Season 7 of All Creatures Great and Small premieres January 17, 2027, on MASTERPIECE PBS. It will air on PBS and be available through the PBS app and PBS MASTERPIECE on Prime Video. Seasons 1 through 6 are currently available to stream, and an eighth season has already been commissioned.