Cranford
BBC1-1/2 , Sunday 20 December 9:00pm - 10:30pm This is the most delectable of all this year's Christmas television treats, a return to the small Cheshire town and its benign coven of bonneted Victorian matrons, a follow-up to the successful 2007 series based on Mrs Gaskell's novels. In two feature-length episodes (the story concludes on Sunday 27 December) Cranford has moved on; it's August 1844 and the hated railway is a mere five miles away and encroaching fast. There has even been trouble from rough-necked railwaymen in the local pub. "The navvies came into town?" gasps a scandalised Miss Matty (Judi Dench). There are other, more respectable, new faces: a family headed by a stern patriarch (Jonathan Pryce); and a widow (Lesley Sharp) with a spoilt son and a much put-upon young daughter. But of course it's Cranford's delightfully stoic, unmarried ladies who are its beating heart and, amid the big social history themes, there are still the endless petty snobberies and the dithering about appropriate headwear. Heidi Thomas's script sparkles and the cast is a dream. Dench is unsurpassable, and only Imelda Staunton as that daunting, gossipy pixie Miss Pole could invest so much disdain in the word "effluvia".
VIDEO Plus+: 5662
Subtitled, Widescreen, High definition, Audio-described
Episode written by Heidi Thomas
Simulcast on BBC HD
CastMiss Matty - Judi Dench
Miss Octavia Pole - Imelda Staunton
Mrs Forrester - Julia McKenzie
Mr Buxton - Jonathan Pryce
Lady Ludlow - Francesca Annis
Lady Glenmire - Celia Imrie
Mrs Bell - Lesley Sharp
Peggy Bell - Jodie Whittaker
Jem Hearne - Andrew Buchan
William Buxton - Tom Hiddleston
Mrs Jamieson - Barbara Flynn
Capt Brown - Jim Carter
The Rev Hutton - Alex Jennings
Septimus Hanbury - Rory Kinnear
Mr Peter Jenkyns - Nicholas Le Prevost
Signor Brunoni - Tim Curry
Mary Smith - Lisa Dillon
Erminia Whyte - Michelle Dockery
Miss Tomkinson - Deborah Findlay
Sir Charles Maulver - Greg Wise
Harry Gregson - Alex Etel
Mrs Clara Smith - Finty Williams
Edward Bell - Matthew McNulty
Miss Galindo - Emma Fielding
Mr Johnson - Adrian Scarborough
Mrs Johnson - Debra Gillett
Martha - Claudie Blakley
Bella Gregson - Emma Lowndes
Bertha - Hannah Hobley
Mulliner - Roddy Maude-Roxby
Giacomo - Nicholas Bishop
Margaret Gidman - Bessie Carter
Directed by: Simon Curtis
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