MATTHEW Lewis is returning to our TV screens as part of a new adaptation of All Creatures Great and Small.

The Ripper Street and Harry Potter movie series star plays a wealthy landowner, Hugh Hulton, in the show from award-winning production company Playground.

Written by Ben Vanstone (The Last Kingdom) and directed by Brian Percival (Downton Abbey), All Creatures Great and Small was filmed on location across Yorkshire.

Its first episode will be broadcast at 9pm on Tuesday, September 1 on Channel 5 and Matthew, who was raised in Horsforth, says he is delighted to be involved.

He said: “When I received the script for the make-up artist on the film I was working on in New Zealand talked to me about the series because my accent reminded her of it.

“As well as being an institution in the UK, it was hugely popular in the Commonwealth.

“So I was very much aware of its popularity and I do recall when it was announced that they were doing a new series of it my dad said ‘Oh, you should try and get involved in that!’.

“Little did I know just how charming, funny and endearing James Herriot’s world really is.”

Revealing a little bit about what we can expect from his character, who is romantically involved with Helen Alderson (played by Rachel Shenton), he said: “Hugh comes from a place of wealth and he is the landowner in this area of the Dales, so a lot of the farmers, particularly Helen, rent his land.

“There’s a degree of deference from the rest of the population of Darrowby. When Hugh walks into the pub people immediately know who he is, and he’s served at the bar immediately! But he’s also very close to these people, very warm and approachable and he’s not the kind of standoffish idea of the lord of the manor who looks down on people with disdain.”

When preparing for the role Matthew took inspiration from an unlikely source - the classic sit-com Blackadder Goes Forth. He said: “With Hugh the key thing was the voice, what he sounded like. I felt like I kind of knew who he was and I knew his perspective on things, because the writing was so good, the characters are there for you to slip into.

“The way he speaks is very different from a lot of the people in the show. I wanted to make sure I captured that and a lot of those accents in Blackadder Goes Forth gave me inspiration.”

Other cast members include Nicholas Ralph as James Herriot, Samuel West as Siegfried, Anna Madeley as Mrs Hall, and Callum Woodhouse as Tristan.