All Creatures Great and Small is a 1975 British film (copyrighted in 1974), directed by Claude Whatham and starring Simon Ward and Anthony Hopkins as Yorkshire vets James Herriot and Siegfried Farnon.

[4] It is based on the first novels by James Herriot (the pen name of veterinary surgeon Alf Wight): If Only They Could Talk (1970) and It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet (1972).

[9] Having passed the British censors in September 1974,[10] the film was not released until 9 May 1975, when it opened in London at the small cinema Studio Two in Oxford Street.

[11] The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "This everyday story of country folk has no ambition beyond an almost obsessive ordinariness, conveyed not through understatement but through clichés.

These dominate the life of simple vet James Herriot, whose daily rounds consist entirely of jolly japes and noble sacrifices, and govern director Claude Whatham's evocation of 1937, which is suffocated by a period charm which becomes less charming by the minute: a pre-war packet of Force is placed prominently on the breakfast table, a "Stop me and buy one" man is placed prominently in the foreground, and so forth.

Peter Suschitzky's pretty photography is noteworthy; so too is the performance of Anthony Hopkins, whose bluff, irascible veterinarian shines like a beacon amidst otherwise dull or stock characterisation.

Not on account of these qualities in themselves, but because of the director's (Claude Whatham) inability to give them any more depth or meaning than a television series", but acknowledged that Anthony Hopkins' and Simon Ward's playing made their characters somewhat believable.