LAST winter the Freeview channel Yesterday broadcast a large selection of the All Creatures Great and Small TV series. Curtains drawn, the fire often on, my wife and I watched most of them.

An absolute joy. Among the pleasures was that at the final credits rolled up readably – not in tiny type squeezed onto half the screen, so that a performer’s name could not be checked.

Since there was always a lovely shot of the Dales in the background – usually Askrigg church at sunset – we watched to savour every last second. The last name to appear was usually that of Bill Sellars, the director whose adaptions so perfectly captured the gentle nature of author Alf Wight’s stories.

The chief pleasure, of course, centred around the brilliant ensemble playing of the main cast. Carol Drinkwater confirmed herself, to us, as not only the first but the best Helen, Herriot’s wife. She looked every inch a comely country lass. And she projected the encouragement that her real-life counterpart seemingly always gave the real Herriot. For it was she who, after years of hearing her husband talk about putting his experiences into a book, spurred him, finally, to do it.

It is a testament to the quality of Alf Wight’s stories – and the TV versions – that when actor Peter Davison (Tristan) left the series for a while, to be replaced by an actor playing a locum, the series did not flag. But if it was the main actors who underpinned the success of the series, gilt edging came in the form of the supporting cast, notably the superb James Grout, playing the hard-drinking small-animal (chiefly dog) specialist Granville Bennett. But each and every farmer came over as authentic. One who had been to London explained why he hadn’t enjoyed it. Used to striding round his fields, he explained. “Couldn’t get on, Mr Herriot. It was all big steps and little steps.”

So believable.

Wife and I agreed that the series could still hold its own as prime-time weekend viewing.

But maybe tastes have changed too much. Might be worth a try anyway – and perhaps we’d be pleasantly surprised.

At least the 100th anniversary of Alf Wight’s birth has brought some good news.

Or is it?

The World of James Herriot, the museum (though they avoid that word) devoted to him, and veterinary science, at Thirsk is being gifted by Hambleton council, which established it as their Millennium Project, to the community. Which community, just Thirsk or the wider Hambleton, which sprawls from Great Ayton to Easingwold, is not clear.

But according to one report in The Northern Echo, the transfer will create “the financial ability to significantly expand”.

Expand into what, and where? Since the centre has already narrowly avoided closure once, this transfer could be seen as offloading a potential liability rather than gifting an asset. Much-loved though the books and TV series still are, will their appeal last? A successful re-run, or new series, of All Creatures might secure the centre’s future – for now. Certainly it was reassuring to hear Rosie Page, Alf Wight’s daughter, insist on Radio 4 that the family would firmly veto any projected ‘sexed-up’ TV version, which had been proposed in the US. God forbid, sex in the cowshed.