All Creatures Great and Small Christmas special 2022: Anna Madeley on Mrs Hall and Siegfried and Gerald

“Her relationship with Siegfried is getting richer and closer,” she said. “They learn more about each other through the series.”

The Christmas episode of All Creatures Great and Small, which will be shown on Channel 5 on Friday, December 23, at 9pm, will also see Mrs Hall thrown into confusion when she bumps into her gentleman friend Gerald in Darrowby marketplace, which was filmed in July the Yorkshire Dales village of Grassington, and learns that the dawn of WWII has caused a change of plans.

Anna said: “It’s a really interesting time that makes people think about what matters to them, who matters to them - it heightens everything about their lives.

“She has obviously been through a war, but it’s a real shock to the system, and it’s quite funny seeing her get into a flap. She is normally the one that’s organised about these things.”

Anna added that she very much enjoyed playing Mrs Hall during series three as her various relationships unfolded, including being reunited with her estranged son, Edward (Conor Deane), before he set off for the navy.

“I loved doing the episode where we finally got to meet Edward, and Conor Deane was brilliant,” she said. “The richness that was in that script, the layers of her family history that were playing out, they wrote that beautifully.

“Mrs Hall seems to have found a nice place, where she feels that she is quite independent, things are good and she feels quite safe and together, and these things come and knock her off her feet a little bit. But they are all quite exciting. The prospect of that relationship with Edward opening up again - they are starting to write to each other - and there is a hopeful future in that.

“Gerald is a really wonderful friend that she can share that bit of history with, but also they have a present-day really wonderful affection for one another. He has opened her up to the idea that there might be life - she is still technically married - if she chose to pursue it, but I think that’s a bit too much for her at the moment.”

Written by Ben Vanstone, the All Creatures Great and Small Christmas special is a highlight of Channel 5’s holiday TV schedule, and brings to a close series three of the popular Channel 5 adaptation, launched in 2020 and produced by Playground, of the best-selling veterinary novels, written by Thirsk vet Alf Wight under the pen name James Herriot.

It has already been confirmed that there will be a fourth series, with filming expected to begin in March 2023 in the Yorkshire Dales.

Anna said: “For Mrs Hall, looking at James and Helen, having just got married and faced with war, it’s an echo of her story, and there will probably be a lot more to come.”

All Creatures Great and Small is on Channel 5 on Friday, December 23, at 9pm and after that on My5.