I saw it and thought it was very well done as far as casting and setting-I have not read the books but think I might just have to! I am looking forward to the rest of the series.
Might have to buy the DVDs too, against the day when I find myself with nothing to do but sit and watch them!

I thought it was very enjoyable and I am sure I will want to see it again. The cast is wonderful, IMHO, and the humor and gentle irony make the show very enjoyable.

***************Possible spoiler**************
* *
* *
* *
* *
*

I can't say I enjoyed the croup scene, but I found it fascinating - I work with kids with croup in the hospital, and the depiction was very realistic. Fortunately the outcome is almost always more positive these days.

I watched Cranford and really enjoyed it. The scene with the oranges made me laugh out loud!

I was really disappointed that I missed it. One of my friends raved about it, particularly the costumes. I was really pleased to find the DVD on Amazon, though it won't be released until May 20th.

siobhan-my 19 year old son was sitting in the room with me when that scene began, and I told him that he had had croup as a child, and how we had treated it-he was fascinated with the scene and my story. He has no memory of it at all.

Just as well he doesn't remember! Thank goodness it is very rare for children to die of it these days. My late grandmother told me that her older brother died of croup - that would have been around 1900, a bit later than Cranford. We haven't been able to eliminate croup, but we've certainly improved the outcome.

But I remember wrapping him in a blanket and taking him outside on cold nights and sitting on a chair on the deck shivering-and sitting in a steamy bathroom rocking him. After the first attack I was calm-but that first one-yipes!

cece, croup takes me back a few years to when youngest son started a late night cough that sounded just like the 'barking' of a seal; very scary at the time. The steam-treatment is still recommended here and I remember the difficulty of getting the electric kettle to keep on boiling without cutting-out. Those sleepless nights of long ago. :-)

Re Cranford and illness/death and without giving too much away there will be plenty more in the series. I think we too easily forget that before the advent of 'modern' medicine the mortality rates among children, even in the better-off classes, to say nothing of death through accidents, childbirth etc. was very high. You probably had just as much chance of recovery when treated by a 'herbalist' as by a trained doctor. The few men with adequate medical skills were often the 'saw-bones' who had seen military service and could amputate a limb at speed hoping not to lose the patient through loss of blood or shock.

I don't know how anyone would come up with these statistics, but I read somewhere that until about 50-60 years ago, one was better off without trained medical care. Doctors did indeed kill their patients out of ignorance, no offense to our gallant and very handsome Cranford doctor. Medical errors are still common these days, unfortunately - imagine what it was like then, with virtually no diagnostic tools, no effective medicines, and complete ignorance of sterile technique and infection control. Childbirth was particularly bad - neither doctors nor midwives washed their hands. Women often died of easily avoided infections, never mind the myriad of other hazards.

Imagine how advanced we will be in another 150 years - our descendents will probably look back on this time as being quite barbaric.

It is so sad to hear of the number of deaths of children who died from what we now control so easily. In an old family cemetary, there is a tombstone of a little girl who died of catscratch fever. My sister and I shudder everytime we see it.

Darn, I forgot to watch the second episode. I have been re-reading the earlier Dick Francis novels. I meant to stop and watch Cranford on television last night but forgot all about it. I'm afraid that watching TV on a regular has just slipped from my routine the past ten years or so. Funny, I used to watch quite a bit of television, but I'm too busy now. I seem to have time for reading or TV, and reading wins every time. So I buy lots of DVDs of favorite movies which I can watch when I please, often when sewing. I guess I'll have to buy Cranford now too.

Did anyone else watch? does it continue at its initial high quality?

Rosefolly

I watched it, although my local PBS station mistakenly played the same hour twice. Hopefully they will correct the mistake for the next showing! (Which may by this afternoon - I had better check.) I thought it was quite wonderful, although very sad. I hope some happy things are to come. I really think this production is superb.

You can watch it on your computer if you are so inclined at the link below -

Here is a link that might be useful: Cranford

Oh, very cool! I'll watch it later this afternoon. Thanks, Siobhan!

Rosefolly

Siobhan-thank you for the link-we were at a hockey-game viewing party last evening and the game went quite late-but now I am all caught up.

I notice on Siobhan's 'Cranford' link that you in the US are watching this in three episodes. Over here in the UK we never get more than one hour advert-free (on BBC) of these 'classic' type plays. They are almost always shown on a Sunday evening and last for several weeks.
Is it that you in the US have longer attention spans than us . . . or what?

We only get shows "advert-free" on what we call "public broadcasting" which is supported by grants from government and corporations, and by "viewer contributions." Cranford, and other classics, mysteries and other dramas, are on Masterpiece Theater, which is on Sunday evening-from 9-10:30 or 11. depending.
Other shows run about 8 minutes advert per hour, I think. Seems like the other way around, actually.

Cranford is being shown in irregular batches - I'm not sure how long the final showing will be. Usually, but not always, these broadcasts are preceded by a short introduction by an actor/actress/personality of some type. Sometimes we have a break after an hour or so, sometimes not. I suppose it depends on the format of the original broadcast. Personally, I can always use a break after an hour.

I'm a PBS (public broadcasting) and NPR (National Public Radio) junkie - I rarely watch or listen to anything else. Well, except for the Red Sox. Luckily my other half shares my preference. Regular commercial TV has no appeal to me. The commercials make me crazy. And why are they always louder than the actual program?

Tonight I am looking forward to a program about Everest - for some reason I always love to hear about mountaineering.

I'm glad Cranford,/i> is available on the web - I would surely miss most of it otherwise.

fixing my mistake!

I finished reading Cranford last night and really enjoyed it, but from what I'm seeing in the posts above and on the website, additional story lines appear in the BBC program from her other books. I looked up her bibliography, but I'm having a hard time telling which of her other books are Cranford-related.

Can anyone help me with the additional titles? Many thanks in advance!

According to the Masterpiece Theatre website, it is based on Cranford, My Lady Ludlow and Mr. Harrison's Confessions.

Rosefolly

I thought the quote for minutes of television advertising per hour in the United States was a little low so I looked it up on Wikipedia. Here is what they had to say.

In the 1960s a typical hour-long American show would run for 51 minutes excluding advertisements. Today, a similar program would only be 42 minutes long; a typical 30-minute block of time includes 22 minutes of programming with 6 minutes of national advertising and 2 minutes of local.
In other words, over the course of 10 hours, American viewers will see approximately 3 hours of advertisements, twice what they would have seen in the sixties. Furthermore, if that sixties show is rerun today it may be cut by 9 minutes to make room for the extra advertisements (some modern showings of Star Trek exhibit this).
Back in the 1950s and 1960s, the average length of a television advertisement was one minute. As the years passed, the average length shrank to 30 seconds (and often 10 seconds, depending on the television station's purchase of ad time). However, today a majority of advertisements run in 15-second increments (often known as "hooks").

So if they are correct, it is 8 minutes per half hour, not per hour.

Rosefolly

Rosefolly, many thanks for the titles!

As for all that advertising, I no longer watch television in real time, we tape (DVR) everything so we can skip through the commercials. I've noticed that since the rise of Tivo and DVRs, product placement has become more common in the shows themselves, which can be both silly and annoying.

I'm getting Cranford in three consecutive Sunday showings.

Rosefolly- That would explain why it feels like more advert than show-it almost is! My DH will not watch adverts-he plays the remote like an instrument, dodging between two or three shows (usually sporting events, but not always) and can judge to a fine second when the show/game will return. Consequently, when we are watching a game at someone else's house, he sees (and sometimes laughs) at commercials for the first time that the rest of us are heartily sick of. Fortunately, most of our friends understand.

My public library only has Cranford, not the other two books. Bah, humbug! I have requested it and am sixth on the list.

I missed the first two episodes too, I'm afraid. I got Cranford from the library and was surprised to find it such a small volume for a 3 hour show. Now I understand. I'll have to search for the other titles at the library so I can read the rest of the tales.

I've been searching for the other two books this week, and the second hand book sellers on the internet have evidently raised their prices to correspond with popularity of the TV production. I bought my copy of Cranford at a library book sale a few years back for a quarter; last time I looked, second-hand Mrs. Gaskell books are running between $8 and $15. My library doesn't have them, either.

I've added My Lady Ludlow and Mr. Harrison's Confessions to my search-for-a-bargain list (it's still fun to hunt!).

A clever publisher would have capitalized on this and brought out a three-in-one volume, and marketed it with the dvd. I thought they had, as there is a new edition featuring Judy Dench on the cover-but as far as I can tell, it is only Cranford.

I've just seen the last installment of Cranford (I managed to sit still for 2 hours!) and thought it quite wonderful. Dench is marvelous. I wonder if I should read the books? How do they compare?

I just saw the last of the three episodes and I think they were superb. I found myself totally lost in the production, the story lines and wonderful British actors. One of the best Masterpiece Theatre shows in quite awhile.

I was especially interested in the story line about Cranford, the unchanging and quintessential English village, confronting and finally adapting to a changed world. So much to think about.

And isn't it interesting that none of us here so far, including myself, has read the books before. Mrs. Gaskell was definitely not in the curriculum for any of us. I wonder if the books might be a disappointment after the modern adaptation.

And according to the website, gaskellsociety.co.uk, there is more Cranford to come. A two-part show will appear for Christmas 2009. That's good news.

It appears that much of what we have seen was based on some of Mrs. Gaskell's short stories, in addition to the novel. She wrote some Christmas-themed short stories so I assume that is what we will see.

We had to read Cranford at school at about 12/13 years old when too young to appreciate the work.
I have since re-read it, but not her other works with the Lady Ludlow story etc.
It is certainly a very sentimental book by modern standards but I think that was what Victorian readers expected and enjoyed, and Mrs Gaskell is looking back to a time in her youth before railways when life was led at a much slower pace.
Cranford was meant to be a small northern English town, but as there are no such places left in a time-warp for the BBC to film in, they took over the small and 'chocolate-boxy' village of Laycock in Wiltshire in the south of the country, so the setting is far prettier than it would have been in those days.

Don't you just miss them all?

There are lots of places in the Cotswolds which might have done as well--even off the route of the well-known tourist towns. One village I saw reminded me of Brigadoon--wish I could remember the name. A local took us there.

I've been away for several days and couldn't watch on Sunday night, so I've just now seen the ending. Quite satisfactory in a Dickensian way. I admit to a few tears.

I'm fifth on the list for the book from the library. I'm just sorry the others aren't available. Maybe I can figure out how to get them from the university library. Surely they will be there!

I watched after the program was over and assume Mystery starts next week. I WISH they hadn't made it one program.

Distracted by other busyness in my life, I was late to the party. By the time I went to the link to watch episodes two and three of Cranford on my computer, the link had been taken down. Too bad. I'll have to decide it I want to see it badly enough to purchase the DVD.

Rosefolly

Rosefolly, I know those Masterpiece DVDs are expensive, but this is one that I would recommend since you missed the program. It is so good. Of course, maybe they will rerun it next year.

Are you a library-goer, Rosefolly? Your local branch may have the DVDs, even more likely if it's part of a network. I'm sure it will be rerun also. A program that good will be around for awhile.

I have absolutely no doubt that PBS will rerun Cranford this summer and probably several times in the next year or two. That is their modus operandi.

Following Siobhan's excellent advice, I have put myself on the waiting list at the local library system for the DVD of Cranford. The system owns seven copies and I am number 24 on the list, so it will be a while. But the price is right! I probably buy too many DVDs. I'm trying to work on a rule of buying movies I will watch several times, or may want to watch ten years from now when it is no longer available.

Rosefolly

The library is a blessing when it comes to Materpiece Theater, Mystery and othe classic adaptations. My system has some that were not shown on my local PBS-such as the Rosemary and Thyme mystery series-lucious gardens and a dead body in each one! what's not to love?
However, I have several bones to pick with the Hamish Macbeth series made for TV-too too many divergences from the books!

Thanks, Cece. I didn't realize I could get those videos from the library. I didn't get Hamish or Rebus on PBS, although my daughter, who has satellite TV, saw them on the BBC channel. We did get Rosemary and Thyme, though. It's peculiar what the different states choose to carry. Tonight mine is rerunning Persuasion (already).

I had never heard of Rosemary and Thyme but thanks to Cece and this thread went right to the library and took out the first year's episodes. Watched two last night and loved them. I was so excited to see that the first one was set in a garden I visited in England two years ago--Folly Farm. Wish they identified all the gardens. And how great to see real-looking women as the protagonists.

I know TV is OT here but couldn't resist saying thanks for this great tip.

I was just given a copy of "Cranford." From its length, looks like I will have a busy reading summer.....

I watched North and South for the first time -loved it- and can't wait to watch Cranford. I missed it on PBS but I'm looking for the books now too. I hate that movies influence my reading choices so much! I'm deep into John Adams right now and cherishing the remaining heft to be read.
But I've read some great books because of movies and found lots of authors I would never have read otherwise.

Better to do it in that order-since the book is usually better than the movie!
Although Cranford was very well done-as was Pride and Prejudice.

I have finished my inter-library loan anthology that had My Lady Ludlow, the rich lady economizing for her son who doesn't know or care character in the PBS show; and Mr. Harrison's Confessions, the young doctor character with all the female admirers; plus four short stories.

At the end, the book shows the loose tying together of these stories from a collection Mrs. Gaskell called Around the Sofa, which had the narrator of MLL, now an invalid holding weekly soirees, telling that story and asking her guests to tell one each.

I quite liked Mr. Harrison, although it was one of her early stories, and the learned person who wrote a lengthy introduction called it too sentimental and farcical. Shows how much I know--I found it very funny since the young doctor didn't have a clue.

Have you all seen that Cranford has three Emmy nominations--best production, best actress for Judi Dench, and best supporting actress (but I've forgotten for whom).

Thanks to Ginny and Cece, I requested the DVDs of Rosemary and Thyme from our local library. I have watched the first two seasons with great enjoyment and am waiting for my turn at the third season.

Adding to my pleasure was catching the show out in a garden error or two. Why? It makes me imagine I am so clever. The best one was when R&T were planning a bed of roses for the front of a boy's school and listed the varieties they would include. Along with the shrub roses they mentioned 'Rambling Rector'. Now this rose is a rambler as notorious for its immense size as for its loveliness. You could conceal a small building with it. No way would it be included there.

Smugness can be a pleasure, too, but the stories are entertaining. Thanks for the nudge to look at these.

Rosefolly