Since it’s Christmas we can perhaps overlook a slide towards chocolate-box treacliness in some of the action.
However, were the colonel to obtain a deferment for Tristan’s call-up, might that change Siegfried’s mind? Well it would, as it happened, and the prickly ethical dilemma simmered away nicely while we caught up with the other goings-on in Skeldale House (and, of course, in Mrs Pumphrey’s stately Pumphrey Manor). He had tasked his underling, the unloveable Major Sebright Saunders (Michael Maloney), with strong-arming Siegfried into passing the beast as hot to trot, and Siegfried’s protestations that the horse might be left permanently lame were brusquely brushed aside. River had an injured leg, but the colonel was determined that his horse should nonetheless race. The unwitting fall guy in this dastardly scheme was River, the racehorse belonging to a man we know only as “the colonel”. Screenwriter Ben Vanstone, who must still be counting his blessings for the way the rejuvenated All Creatures… has blasted off into ratings heaven, had devised a plotline whereby Siegfried was prepared to commit a grotesque breach of veterinary ethics if it would enable him to pluck Tristan out of the firing line and back into the friendly embrace of the family business.
So it proved, and Tristan’s determination to join the war effort, and the despairing efforts to stop him by his older brother Siegfried (Samuel West), provided the running theme of this Yuletide one-off.
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