Elizabeth Gaskell Bbc Collection: Cranford / North & South / Wives & Daughters (DVD)

Set Comprises: Cranford: This BBC dramatisation of three of Elizabeth Gaskell's novels captures the small absurdities and tragedies in the lives of the people of Cranford, a small rural Cheshire town, inhabited largely by women. This is a community that runs on cooperation and gossip, at the very heart of which are the daughters of the former rector: Miss Deborah Jenkyns and her sister Miss Matty. But domestic peace is constantly threatened in the form of financial disaster, imagined burglaries, tragic accidents, and the reapparance of long-lost relatives. North And South: A powerful adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's feisty and passionate love story, set across the social divides in the changing world of Victorian industrial society. Margaret Hale is one of literature's most original heroines: a southerner from a country vicarage newly settled in the industrial northern town of Milton. In the shock of her move, she misjudges charismatic cotton mill-owner John Thornton, whose strength of purpose and passion are a match for her own pride and wilfulness. When the workers of Milton call a strike, Margaret takes their side, and the two are brought into deeper conflict. As events spiral out of control, Margaret - to her surprise - begins to fall in love with Thornton... Wives And Daughters: After years spent as a widower, village doctor Mr Gibson has decided to remarry
something for which his rather naive daughter, Molly, is wholly unprepared. Molly's world is soon overturned by the arrival of an unwanted stepmother and a bewitching, beautiful stepsister, Cynthia. In spite of the circumstances of their acquiantance and of being so entirely different from one another, the two girls instantly form a close relationship. But it is a friendship that is put to the test when they look set to become rivals in love. Matters are further complicated when a dangerous secret emerges from Cynthia's past in which she entangles Molly, with serious consequences for them both...