All Creatures Great And Small Season 6 Sparks A Rift Between Mrs Hall And Siegfried

All Creatures Great and Small kicks off season 6 by yanking one of its comfort blankets away, and the fallout is exactly as chaotic as you think. If Skeldale House without Mrs Hall sounds wrong to you, you are correct. It is wrong. It is also very funny, very sad, and very messy.

So... where is Mrs Hall?

Four years after the Christmas special, Mrs Hall has been in Sunderland. She left Darrowby to care for her son Edward, who barely survived when the ship he served on was sunk by enemy fire. Then a granddaughter arrived, and staying put became the only sensible choice. Everyone at Skeldale agreed she should be with family. Sensible does not equal painless.

Meanwhile, Skeldale looks like a hurricane moved in

Siegfried insists he is fine. He is not fine. We meet him asleep on the sofa in yesterday’s clothes, late for an appointment, an almost-empty bottle of whisky within arm’s reach. There is a woman asleep under a coat beside him, a Shetland pony wandering around like it owns the place, and domesticated rats scurrying through the house as if they pay rent. His diet appears to be hard liquor and tinned sardines. The place is such a shambles you would hesitate to put pigs in there, never mind people.

The intervention

Eventually James and Tristan hit their limit. They head up to the north east to retrieve Mrs Hall before Siegfried misplaces his own head along with everything else. She agrees to come back, but only for a few days while Edward is away. One catch: Siegfried has no idea she is coming. He believes she chose to drop in of her own accord. If he learns the truth, he will be mortified. (Spoiler: he learns the truth.)

That first reunion

The initial encounter is awkward in a way that makes you wonder if these two have somehow never met. But the second Siegfried clocks her, he softens. He manages: "It is good to see you again." Not much, sure, but the look between them does the heavy lifting.

Scrabble, feelings, and a bad exit

A quiet game of Scrabble derails when Siegfried loses control of the thing he hates most: his emotions. He snaps that Skeldale managed perfectly well before and that Mrs Hall’s presence "robbed" them of "autonomy." When she counters with James and Tristan’s concerns about him, he storms out. She decides, painfully, to cut the visit short.

Siegfried then lets the mask slip with James. "She left us," he says. "What was I supposed to do, pretend to be happy? Pretend to be fine?" James warns him not to shove people away. It does not land until Siegfried gets home, spots Mrs Hall’s apron, and realizes he has massively blown it.

The platform plea

He sprints to the station and catches her just in time, finally saying what he should have led with.

"We tried to find a replacement. It could never work. No one could ever work, because they are not you.

I understand you might have to live your life. If that is not here with us, well, that is up to you. But you should know that we would like it to be."

They cling to each other on the platform as an announcement about the war’s end crackles over the tannoy. If you did not know their history, you might assume they were lovers. Which brings us to the question this show keeps dodging on purpose.

Are Siegfried and Mrs Hall a thing? Should they be?

Fans have been shipping these two for ages. The show has never gone there. Callum Woodhouse put it plainly to The Mirror: everyone is desperate to see them together, but he’s not sure how he feels about that, in part because he is thinking about co-stars Sam and Anna as, well, Sam and Anna. That is a pretty inside-baseball way of saying: it is complicated.

• The case for: They move like an old married couple without noticing. He was speechless that one Christmas when she dressed up. The little looks and rhythms are undeniable. The station hug did not exactly cool things down.
• The case against: He is her boss. If they made it romantic, she would have to stop being the housekeeper in any formal sense. Also, does anyone believe Mrs Hall could walk past a sink of dishes? It would get weird fast if she slid back into that role while they were a couple.
• The bigger point: Not every bond needs to be a will-they-won’t-they. Platonic relationships can be just as rich and lasting. Defining whatever this is between them stays tricky by design, and the show seems happy to live in that grey area.

Odds and ends

If you are tracking the brothers: season 6 is set to push further into Siegfried and Tristan’s relationship, and an actor has teased that things are not all OK with Tristan this year. Translation: brace for more than tidy farm calls.

When and where

All Creatures Great and Small season 6 airs Thursdays on Channel 5. Bring tissues. Maybe a mop for Skeldale.