Television
Lavish in all the right ways
Published 06 December 2007
A return to the glory days of costume drama, courtesy of Elizabeth Gaskell
Cranford BBC1
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 it to the BBC's 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, but this is unfair; Cranford is better than that. It's up there with the BBC's stunning Middlemarch, which was made the year before a soggy Colin Firth got everyone so excited, and was the series that revived costume drama after a long spell in the doldrums.
It's beautifully written, which is a surprise, given that the script is by Heidi Thomas, who penned Lilies, the cheesiest drama I've ever had the misfortune to see ("Liverpool, 1920. Three girls on the edge of womanhood, a world on the brink of change"; it was axed by the BBC after one series). So I'm guessing that she nicked quite a lot of her best lines - "My father was a man; I think I understand the sex" - from Mrs G. But it also looks perfect. It's not just the cobbles and carriages; the designers have used colour to mirror character. Look at the powdered face of Lady Ludlow (Francesca Annis), and you think of the cold mist rising forbiddingly off her enclosed land.
Is Cranford, an everyday story of Knutsford life circa 1830, still "relevant"? Naturally, the makers of this version have done their public service best to emphasise its more modern themes - Cranford's inhabitants have an irrational fear of incomers, believing that their arrival will herald a terrifying crime wave - but the truth is that, in its heart, it is not a 21st-century tale at all. Perhaps this is another reason why it is pulling in eight million viewers a week. Not only does it extol the virtues of quiet economy (no status handbags here, girls; you'll have to make do with an extra ribbon about the hem of your dress), fortitude in the face of loss, and duty; it suggests - and how crazily radical this must seem to the Heat generation - that lasting female friendship may be as consoling as sexual love.
There are not, you see, enough men to go around in Cranford, which means that, unlike almost anything else that has been on television in the past decade, its cast consists mostly of women, and women of a certain age, to boot. So far, much of the critical attention has been spent on Judi Dench, who plays Miss Matty, and it is true that this is one of the best performances she has ever given: quiet and affecting. But in this company, she cannot be said to be a standout.
Julia McKenzie (as cow-loving Mrs Forrester) and Barbara Flynn (as hoity-toity Mrs Jamieson) are both at the top of their game, and even the smaller roles are deftly done (Debra Gillett, who plays Mrs Johnson the haberdasher, reels off her wares to dithering customers with a beady intensity that is quite superb). My favourite performance so far, however, is that of Lisa Dillon, who plays Mary Smith, Miss Matty's companion, and whose lovely face can swing from wry amusement to heart-clutching empathy in a single beat. These fantastic women own the piece just as Gaskell's characters possess Cranford - "like Amazons".
Pick of the week
This Is Civilisation
8 December, 8pm, Channel 4
Matthew Collings on John Ruskin. Not just a great beard.
The Street
13 December, 9pm, BBC1
Last in the series. A boy murders a baby. Ten years on he’s released . . .
Russell Brand on the Road
12 December, 9pm, BBC4
Predictable love letter from Brand to Jack Kerouac.
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