Anna Madeley visibly bristles when I suggest that Mrs Hall, her much beloved housekeeper from All Creatures Great and Small, might be repressed.
“It’s funny,” she begins in a tone that does not indicate amusement, “putting labels on characters when one of the things I love about this show, one of the things we’ve set out to do from the get-go, is avoid tropes and archetypes”.
Mrs Hall, Madeley is adamant, is not your typical busybody, buttoned-up housekeeper.
“We could have very easily come out with the old trope of the bossy woman telling everyone what to do, which a lot of people expect, and instead what’s really refreshing is having a character who has proper story behind her, history that informs who she is.”
And who is she?
“She is a woman of her time with expectations of her life that fit where she’s from. She had a difficult time with her husband and she’s come through something there. She’s had a difficult time with her son and she’s come through something there. Her life’s been tough.”
Madeley is, of course, quite right to challenge my broad brush strokes’ characterisation of her character. Younger than she is in the novels and altogether warmer a character, Madeley’s Mrs Hall is a woman with hinterland, and hidden talents. Just tonight, we discovered her heretofore unknown adeptness at darts.
Played with delicacy and nuance by Madeley, Mrs Hall isn’t just Skeldale House’s beacon of decency, stoicism and quiet resilience – without whom the house could not function, on a very practical level – she is also its moral centre and beating heart. Yes, there is a fortitude befitting the period and Mrs Hall’s class and position, but there is also extraordinary tenderness. As the vets of All Creatures deal with wounded animals, Mrs Hall, in her own way, heals wounded souls – including her own.
“She’s someone who speaks her mind, gently,” Madeley says. “She’s the person in the house who does say there’s an elephant in the room and we need to talk about it.”
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So far, it has just been metaphorical elephants that Mrs Hall’s had to deal with but anything is possible where Siegfried is concerned. Given the chemistry between the curmudgeonly eccentric vet played by Samuel West and Mrs Hall, might that include romance?
“Oh my God, no,” Madeley exclaims, half-laughing, half-aghast. “A real friendship has blossomed between the two of them and they are of a generation so there’s lots of things they can share and understand about one another from their lived experiences. But we just have a lot of fun with these two characters who butt heads a bit.”
Seeming to put paid to any Sieg-drey entanglement, Madeley concedes that “They do get on and they do have a lot of affection for each other,” before adding, somewhat tantalisingly, “Where that will lead, you don’t know.”
Certainly, in the post-war years, the times they were a-changing. And now that Mrs Hall has settled matters with her ex-husband and with her son…
“It will be interesting to see where freedom from those concerns will now take her as a person,” Madeley muses. “And whether it will allow her to be a little bit… freer.”
All Creatures Great and Small continues on Thursday at 9pm on 5.
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