James Herriot

Fresh from his veterinary exams, James Herriot arrives in the Yorkshire Dales to take up a position with the mercurial Siegfried Farnon. He is earnest, a little green, and quietly determined to prove himself among farmers who trust experience over diplomas. Every visit to a lambing shed or a stubborn farmer is a small test he means to pass.

Christopher Timothy plays him as the steady, bemused centre around which the Dales' eccentrics revolve, and that restraint is the joke and the warmth of the show at once. Herriot's decency never curdles into blandness because Timothy lets his exhaustion, awe, and dry humour show through the mud and the miscarrying cows alike.