Saw it last night and really liked it. Imelda Staunton (Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter) was great as the shameless town gossip. Dame Judi Dench and the actress who played her puritanical sister were just terrific. The scene with the cat, the buttermilk and the lace was very funny. I liked the guy who played the young doctor - he’d played Mr. Bingley in the Keira Knightley version of Pride & Prejudice a few years ago, IIRC. There was a good mix of highborn, middle class and lowborn society shown. The cow in gray flannels was funny. My wife and I agreed that the young sickly nobleman, off in Italy, was being set up as a profligate gay guy, even if his almost ghostly mom would never acknowledge that - wonder if he’ll ever appear?
It’s easy to understand why the railroad would scare the older folks in town. And the double tragedy at the end really packed an emotional punch.
Dame Eileen Atkins played the puritanical sister. Both Atkins and Dench were nominated for the same TV Bafta, with Atkins picking up the prize. There are two promised Christmas specials, but they won’t be shown until 2009.
Just watched it on DVD and adored it – may end up buying it. I watched the “making of” feature on the second DVD and they said they have enough material to do a sequel or two if there’s any demand – whither shall I lodge my demands? I love that there was a fair amount of stuff left unaddressed, like Mary’s relationship with the Irish doctor.
I felt a strong dislike for it. Mrs. Gaskell couldn’t decide if she wanted to write a nice story or not; what she ended up with was the worst of nicey-nicey Victorian sentiment, and the worst of Victorian narrative sadism. Far too many horrible things happened, and far too many of them were caused by the characters’ infantile understanding of the world.
She really had it in for marriage between anyone but the young and attractive, too.
And this coming from someone with a bachelor’s degree in Victorian novels!
How was Mr. Carter’s death caused by an infantile understanding of the world? Or Walter’s? In fact, I’m not seeing any "infantile’ understandings at all – the whole thing about the women misinterpreting the young doctor’s intentions, for instance, was all about the social mores of the times, not a failure to understand human nature.
Wowsers, what a good description. Nevertheless, I was totally riveted. It sort of rambled on in a nicely paced way, we got to love the characters, we got to feel their joys and sorrows. The characters were not two-dimensional all-good or all-bad; they were complex, and many (such as that one baroness chick, or whatever) were an interesting mixture (she was, to continue the example, a complete class snob and had a gigantic blind spot about her son; on the other hand, she did elicit my sympathy when she came to the deathbed of her property manager, and wanted to show him loyalty and goodwill). Far too freaking many people died though!
It could easily go on indefinitely, in a serial miniseries way.
Disclaimer: I know nothing about the book(s)/stories.
I gave myself the DVD for my birthday. It was fun seeing the village of Lacock as Cranford (the same village that was used for Meryton the 1996 version of “Pride and Prejudice,” and I was there just over a week ago!) Most of the performances were wonderful, although Dame Judi’s was the most touching to me. It made me think that so much of life for Victorian women involved hoping and waiting, and reconciling one’s self to crushing disappointments.
Lots of work for good actresses–there was such a range of interesting female characters here. The only one I didn’t care for was the very pretty but rather vapid parson’s daughter, whom the young doctor was in love with. When she fell ill, I realized I didn’t care whether she lived or died; I would have much rather seen the doctor or some other gentleman recognize the worth of Mary Smith, a young lady of character and intelligence whom I took much more liking to. But, sadly, since they were from different stories to begin with, I knew it was not to be.
The story was put together from 3 different novellas of Mrs. Gaskell’s: one about the ladies in the village of Cranford, one about the young doctor, and the third about the great lady who resists all change.