Cranford
June 2008 Reviewed by: Charlotte Meyer Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

It’s 1842 in a small Cheshire village called Cranford. Time stands still in Cranford, mainly because a circle of older ladies, most of them widowed or unmarried, oversee and enforce its customs and rituals. Their undisputed leader is the elderly Miss Deborah Jenkyns, whose supervision of the town’s manners extends as well to her submissive maiden sister Miss Matty. Daughters of a clergyman, they have always lived together, in scrupulous decorum. All the way from the big city of Manchester, a young niece comes to join them, Mary Smith, who becomes the outside observer and sympathetic narrator of life in the tiny town: "Now all around us England shifts and changes, but Cranford stands fast."

But shifts and changes do come to Cranford. Old relationships shift when strangers move in across the road from the Misses Jenkyns. (The astute Miss Deborah, watching from a window, makes an analysis of their class from tiny details -- their spinet piano, their hired fly.) A change that thrills is the arrival of a handsome young bachelor doctor, where marriageable men are few. Death brings sudden change, striking both old and young. But the most dramatic change of all is the inexorable arrival of the railroad, touching everyone in Cranford, from young Harry, son of a shiftless poacher, to Lady Ludlow, remote mistress of Cranford’s one grand estate.

Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1853 novel Cranford has been read variously as "an exercise in cloying nostalgia, a satire on frustrated spinsterhood, and a celebration of female separatism defying the patriarchy," says literary critic Charlotte Mitchell. Take out one word, cloying, and all three would also describe this BBC production of Cranford. It recaptures the smallest details of a vanished time and place. Gently but very comically, it satirizes a town full of old-lady busybodies. And it uplifts us all in its celebration of women without men who manage under diversity, survive heartbreak, and generously care for one another.

Judi Dench is simply superb as the poignant, compliant Miss Matty. She is so much in character that it’s as if she’s never played another role. Eileen Atkins as the stern Miss Deborah plays with emotional complexity a part that would have been caricature by a lesser actor. Imelda Staunton steals every scene as the eccentric gossip Miss Poole, a role screenwriter Heidi Thomas especially enjoyed. With fine restraint, Michael Gambon plays Miss Matty’s long-absent suitor, returning to repeat the proposal she rejected out of family obligation many years ago. Each performance is exquisitely developed and meticulously directed. The beautiful fresh faces of the two young romantic parts in the cast complement the beautiful lined faces of the many, many extraordinary regulars of British television.

In a well-made featurette we learn how important costuming was to the actors. To don these finely detailed costumes was to be put into character, several of the actors remarked. Such care seems to have been given to every aspect of this production, from the lovely original music to the authentic Victorian interiors to the beautiful summer scenes of the countryside. You’ll find again the rich, dense colors you have come to expect from the BBC cameras. The audio is only stereo, good and crisp enough, but if you have any trouble with British accents, try the English subtitles! The DVD contains all five episodes and the specially made featurette full of interviews and behind-the-scenes details. If your thirst for details about this remarkable series isn’t slaked by the featurette, try Cranford’s own website: www.bbc.co.uk/drama/cranford.

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