Archive for November, 2007
Winter Approaches Cranford
SPOILER ALERT: This is a detailed plot description, it may spoil the experience for any viewers and potential viewers. Cranford Ep 3/5 Sunday 2 December 9:00pm – 10:00pm BBC1 As winter approaches, Cranford is beset by sorrows and struggles to regain its confidence, in the third episode of the Elizabeth Gaskell drama co-created by Sue [...]
Viewers stay true to Cranford
Lavish BBC1 costume drama Cranford continued to captivate viewers on Sunday night, November 25 – virtually equalling its debut by attracting 7.9 million viewers. The second episode of the costume drama, when its impressive cast including Eileen Atkins and Judi Dench had to deal with a runaway cow and revelations at Lady Ludlow’s garden party, [...]
Where gossip is a national treasure
I’ve never read Cranford, and, just between the two of us, neither have you. It’s on our list, though, and has been since we were 18 and first discovered we had a list. Everywhere else in the world, literate
Miss Matty (Dame Judi Dench) is shaken when a mysterious acquaintance from her past resurfaces
SPOILER ALERT: This is a detailed plot description, it may spoil the experience for any viewers and potential viewers. Cranford Ep 2/5 Sunday 25 November 9:00pm – 10:00pm BBC ONE Deborah surprises Matty by encouraging Jessie’s romance with a visiting soldier named Major Gordon, in part two of the classic drama serial set in a [...]
BBC’s Cranford: it’s a classic
Max Davidson visits Lacock, the Southern village playing a Northern one in the BBC’s Cranford. Knutsford, Lacock. Lacock, Knutsford. What’s the difference? If the BBC can rig phone-ins, it is hardly going to balk at replacing a Cheshire village with a Wiltshire village, is it? Elizabeth Gaskill grew up in Knutsford, Cheshire, where she
Simply Stunning
The weekend’s TV Nancy Banks-Smith – The Guardian Ah, the BBC Sunday serial! Something special like your Sunday best. Cranford (BBC1) will see you through beautifully until Christmas. Elizabeth Gaskell’s perfect little classic, beautifully and minutely observed, has been beefed up with two more stories. May
Small absurdities and major tragedies
SPOILER ALERT: This is a detailed plot description, it may spoil the experience for any viewers and potential viewers. Cranford Ep 1/5 Sunday 18 November 9:00pm – 10:00pm BBC ONE Part one of the drama is set in June/July 1842. Mary Smith (Lisa Dillon) flees a crisis at home in Manchester to stay with two [...]
The first housewife superstar
By William Langley – Daily Telegraph Profile: Elizabeth Gaskell It has taken 150 years for the novelist known as Mrs Gaskell to escape the deathgrip of Victorian sanctimony and ascend into our age as Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Superstar – mother, mistress of manners, model of multi-tasking, and, from tonight, the surest hit on television. The [...]
Morris men set for small screen stardom
By Emilie Bradshaw A group of Lancashire morris men are to feature in a new TV drama starring actress Judi Dench. Producers called on the skills of Leyland Morris Men for a May Day scene for the BBC’s five-part drama serial, Cranford. Nine members of the group travelled to London and spent two days on [...]
“I’ll not listen to reason,” she said, now in full possession of her voice, which had been rather choked with sobbing. “Reason always means what someone else has got to say.”