DVD Review Cranford

This series is a must for Anglophiles. It is five episodes that bring you into a tiny town and covers a year from 1842 to 1843. It is about change, and how the populace react to it. There is so much packed into those five wonderful hours, my first instinct is to watch it all over again, immediately.

And so much detail about what daily life was like, you learn much, and a lot of it.... well, you think, thank whomever I didn't live in that era there. Some of it is romantic, and then there is a great change and tragedy ensues. So your hope for a happy end goes RIGHT down the tubes.

There are two scenes in it where Peter really lost it. In the first episode, a carpenter falls out of a tree hand suffers a compound fracture in his arm. A new doctor is in town, and despite what the older doctor who summoned him reccomends, (amputation), the young one saves his arm under what today would be harrowing circumstances, and in the last one, a necessary leg amputation, and the patient dies. It terribly upset him.

The main focus is of all the ladies in the town, and there is nothing satiric or mean about it. The cast is stellar, and absolutely wonderful. Some of it is so hilariously wonderful, you burst out laughing, only to have it stick in your throat moments later and feel sad.

And.... it feels modern. Sure, we don't live with candles for light, but there is so much in there, about human nature that doesn't change much, it is a very rewarding experience, and I highly recommend it. Oh yes, and Imelda Staunton stole the show. Veering on the edge, but never getting into satire. (She was the fascist Laura Bush similar headmaster in the last Harry Potter film, and that was johnny-one-note, but here she shows how much she can do.)

It was wonderful.