With its first broadcast in 2015, The Yorkshire Vet is our longest running series. It has won numerous RTS Awards and in 2024, the year of its 19th series and 200th episode, was shortlisted in the prestigious National Television Awards and Broadcast Awards. Over the years the show has regularly attracted more than one million live viewers in its regular Tuesday 8pm slot on Channel 5 – occasionally peaking over two million – with millions more watching catchup and repeats.
A co-production with Group M; the original brief of the show was to give viewers the “real All Creatures Great & Small”. Based on the best-selling books by James Herriot, ‘All Creatures’ had been a popular BBC drama series in the 1970s and 80s (with Channel 5 launching its own hugely successful reboot in 2020, after broadcasting ten series of The Yorkshire Vet).
In the early series, The Yorkshire Vet followed the goings on at the original Herriot practice – Skeldale Veterinary Centre in Thirsk, North Yorkshire. The two featured vets were Peter Wright and Julian Norton, with senior partner Peter even having served his apprenticeship under Alf Wight himself (James Herriot was Alf’s pseudonym).
Over the years it has grown to focus on four locations across the county. A new generation of mixed practice vets (Matt, Shona, Rohin & David) based in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, have joined the show. Julian now runs two new surgeries of his own – one of them in Thirsk, keeping the series in its original home. And, to continue doing the farm animal work he loves, Peter has left Skeldale to join a traditional Yorkshire practice on the edge of the North York Moors.
But, throughout all of this evolution, the show’s popularity has endured over the past 10 years, 22 series, numerous specials and 200+ episodes. Which is because the heart of the show has remained: vets and nurses, working across Yorkshire towns and beautiful countryside, treating all creatures great and small.
