BBC1 period drama Cranford has picked up three nominations in this year’s Golden Globe awards.

The series, co-produced by the BBC Drama and WGBH, is the only UK show in the running for best mini-series or film made for TV. The other nominees in the category are John Adams, Recount, Bernard & Doris and A Raisin in the Sun.

Judi Dench is up for best actress, while co-star and Bafta winner Eileen Atkins is nominated as best supporting actress.

The winners of both the TV and film Golden Globes will be announced on 11 January.

Cranford, broadcast in the US as part of public service broadcaster PBS’s Masterpiece Theatre strand, features the lives of the residents of a small Cheshire market town in the 1840s.

The BBC1 costume drama will be up against HBO’s John Adams, Sci-Fi Channel’s Tin Man and A&E’s The Andromeda Strain in the best miniseries category.

Dench, nominated in the best actress in a miniseries or movie category for her role as kindhearted spinster Matty Jenkyns, will compete against Susan Sarandon in HBO’s Bernard and Doris; Laura Linney in John Adams; Catherine Keener in Showtime’s American Crime; and Phylicia Rashad in ABC’s A Raisin in the Sun.

Dame Eileen Atkins, nominated in the best supporting actress in a miniseries or movie category for her role as Cranford’s Miss Deborah, will compete with against fellow Briton Ashley Jensen for her role in the final Extras, screened on HBO in the US; Laura Dern in HBO’s Recount; Alfre Woodard in CBS’s Pictures of Hollis Woods; and Audra McDonald in A Raisin in the Sun.

Synopsis: A three-part adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s “Cranford,” about life in an 1840s Cheshire village. Judi Dench and Eileen Atkins star as sisters Matty and Deborah Jenkyns who, in the opener, welcome an old friend (Lisa Dillon) to live with them. Also, the town’s new doctor (Simon Woods) introduces new medical procedures and causes hearts to swoon; and a railroad headed Cranford’s way causes some concern.

Airs: Sunday, May 4, 2008; PBS; 9-11 PM EST

Part 2 on Sunday, May 11, 2008

Part 3 on Sunday, May 18, 2008

By Gazette Reporter

BBC TV cameras will return to Lacock to film a Christmas special of hit period drama Cranford.

Stars of the original series, including Dame Judi Dench, Imelda Staunton and Francesca Annis, have all joined the follow-up to the autumn series.

The special will pick up life in the small Cheshire market town in September 1844 – a year after the marriage of Sophy (Kimberley Nixon) and Dr Harrison (Simon Woods).

Kate Harwood, the BBC’s head of series and serials, and executive producer of Cranford, said she was pleased the ratings winner would be back.

“Cranford captured the hearts of the nation last year as every week, nearly 8m viewers tuned in to catch up with Miss Matty and her fellow villagers,” she said.

“I am delighted that we are able to bring these much-loved characters back to life for a Christmas special in 2009 and once again uniting an unprecedented pool of talent to thrill and entertain our audiences.”
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The serial is nominated for four BAFTA Television Awards this year including

In the days when I used to whip through Victorian novels as if they were meringues, Cranford was never one of my favourites. I liked my Gaskell to taste of soot and sweat, for the action to take place in Manchester basements with dirt floors, a minimum of 12 coughing inhabitants to every room.

Now, though, I’m in the middle of a thorough rethink. Two decades later, and along comes the BBC with a “lavish” adaptation of Cranford (Sundays, 9pm) which, in spite of all my misgivings, I end up watching and . . . it’s wonderful. Like every other thirtysomething woman I know, I now refuse to leave the house on Sunday nights, and will not do so until this balm to my soul comes to an end. More to the point, I’m wondering: was I wrong? Is Elizabeth Gaskell’s most popular novel also her best, or is it just that this version is so good that it makes you think it must be so? It’s one of the two, I’m sure – though there is a third possibility, which is that I’m simply getting old. And with age comes not only (ha!) wisdom, but a flinching away from unrelenting grimness.

Whatever. The series is great. People are comparing (more…)

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 BBC’s adaptation of (more…)