[Warning: The below contains spoilers for All Creatures Great and Small Season 6, Episode 6, “Our Hearts Are Full.”]
Something about Tristan Farnon was different in the sixth season of the esteemed Masterpiece series All Creatures Great and Small. Having just returned to the Yorkshire Dales on leave after serving with the Royal Army Veterinary Corps during World War II, Callum Woodhouse’s character initially appeared to be the same lively, occasionally impish lad we’ve come to know, whether he was helping James (Nicholas Ralph) unload an elephantine X-ray machine or vying with elder brother Siegfried (Samuel West) to prove who’s the better horse doctor.
But at times Tristan seemed weighed down by a tinge of melancholy. He didn’t tell anyone he’d been awarded the Military Cross for bravery until Mrs. Hall (Anna Madeley) found the medal in his room. In fact, the only living creature the veterinarian had been able to confide in was a sassy, standoffish parrot named George, who had been displaced after losing his flock and then his human owner.
“Tristan’s good at putting on a brave face,” Woodhouse tells TV Insider. “Quite a lot of the time, he is able to just be in the moment — being in the [pub] with James or helping a farmer with his animal. He’s able to take joy from that, then the second he’s left to his own thoughts, the cloud descends over his brain again.”
That cloud was out in full force in the season’s beautifully rendered penultimate episode, which aired on PBS Sunday, February 15. But it gave Tristan a chance to set his emotional struggles free by finally revealing to Siegfried what he endured in Sicily.
Darrowby celebrates the war’s end. (Helen Williams/Courtesy of Playground Entertainment and MASTERPIECE)
At the start of the episode, as Tristan was preparing to be redeployed, he helped Siegfried tend to an imposing shire horse named Weissmuller. But the animal got spooked and started thrashing about. It was enough to unnerve Tristan, who fled. He couldn’t even celebrate later that night, when news broke that Japan had surrendered and World War II was finally over.
The next morning Mrs. Hall and Siegfried found Tristan in the church, and when she left the brothers alone, the younger Farnon shared his story. As the camera remained on Woodhouse, Tristan wrenchingly described how his unit suffered numerous casualties when they encountered land mines. Their horses were frantic at the explosions, and Tristan tried to help but had to tread carefully. He survived, but Billy, a close friend since their training days who warned him not to move, wasn’t so lucky.
“I got the medal because I managed to save a few chaps,” a weeping Tristan told Siegfried. “But Billy wasn’t one of them. He saved me, but I couldn’t save him. The cross should be his, not mine.” Siegfried realized it wasn’t Weissmuller that scared his brother, but the fear he recognized in the horse that shook him to his core. Tristan still worried he’d never fully recover from what he saw. “No one wants the war to be over more than me,” he said, “but if all it takes is some scared horse to wrench me back, then maybe it never will be.”
Woodhouse recognized the significance of his character’s storyline and prepared for this powerful scene by visiting London’s Imperial War Museum, which had an exhibit that included accounts from soldiers who suffered from what is now called PTSD during World War II. “It’s such an important and sensitive subject that you really want to do it justice and get it right,” he says, adding that his immersion also included purchasing a plethora of materials from the gift shop. “I think I practically bankrupted myself with the amount of books and things I wanted to take home to drown myself in.”
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One thing made shooting the scenes with the shire horse challenging. “He could not have been less intimidating,” says Woodhouse. “He was absolutely gorgeous and lovely to be around, which weirdly made the scene a lot harder. I’m meant to be very scared of this horse, and the horse just wanted to be everyone’s friend.”
Tristan joined the V-J Day festivities that ended the episode. He wore his medal at last as he lit the bonfire on a beautiful summer night. As a band played and the citizens of Darrowby prepared for a new beginning, the occasion was as enchanting for Woodhouse as it was for his character.
“It’s times like that when it’s magic, really,” he says. “You don’t have to act that much. You just take in your surroundings, look at what’s around you, and very much feel in the moment. It was fantastic.”
All Creatures Great and Small, Season 6 Finale, Sunday, February 22, 9/8c, PBS (check local listings at pbs.org)
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