All Creatures Great & Small

Great Performances brings the best in the performing arts from across America and around the world to a US television audience. It presents a diverse programming portfolio of classical music, opera, popular song, musical theater, dance, drama, and performance documentaries.

Hyacinth Bucket (whose name she insists is pronounced "bouquet") continually looks for opportunities to climb the social ladder, though she's wedged on a rung just below her sister Violet (whose house has a swimming pool, sauna, and room for a pony) and just above her working class sisters Daisy and Rose. Hyacinth's passion for flawless entertaining unnerves her neighbor Elizabeth, who is often invited to the Bucket home for coffee. Elizabeth's divorced brother Emmet, who also lives next door to the Buckets, tries to avoid Hyacinth because she breaks into song in his presence in the hope he'll cast her in one of his "little theater" musical productions.

A look at animals in their natural habitats also explores key scientific concepts that the animals' actions and behaviors exemplify.

This show tells the story of partners Freddie Thornhill (Sir Ian McKellen) and Stuart Bixby (Sir Derek Jacobi), who have lived together in a small central London flat for nearly fifty years. Constantly picking each other apart and holding on to petty slights for decades, Freddie and Stuart are always at each other's throats, cracking snide remarks aimed at the other's age, appearance, and flaws. However, underneath their vicious, co-dependent fighting, they have a deep love for one another. Freddie and Stuart are often joined by feisty best friend Violet Crosby (Frances de la Tour) and Ash Weston (Iwan Rheon), their young, upstairs neighbor.

Shari Lewis lives with Lamb Chop, Hush Puppy, and Charlie Horse (all of which she voices) and they get into all sorts of adventures, as well as Betcha tricks, Knock-Knock Joke segments, Riddles, Teddy Bear Tales, even song-and-dance, and to close it all, they sing, "This is the song that never ends, yes it goes on and on, my friend..."

With the help of his friend the Man in the Yellow Hat, a curious little monkey named George sets out on adventures to learn about the world.