Cranford is an excellent piece of wintertime television.
I can't recommend it enough as the epitome of gentle drama, often hilariously funny, and often exceptionally sad. It is beautifully presented in an understated manner, with the grotesquerie of the characters never overdone or overplayed.
Having said this - the fashion historian geek in me is compelled to point out a rather appalling costuming error. There's a excellent sequence regarding a parrot and a cage-crinoline based upon a later Cranford short story by Elizabeth Gaskell.
The actual episode is set in 1844, this is made explicitly clear at the beginning. The costuming throughout is excellent in that it is so authentically dated and backwards, with the older female characters wearing styles that would have been fashionable in the late 1820s and early 1830s, and the younger women (except for the extremely fashionable, fresh-from-Paris Erminia) in late 1830s styles. This reflects the way in which rural/backwater fashions lag behind the epitome of high fashion, and how older women persisted in retaining garments that suited them most from their youth - one only has to look at Queen Mary in her 1910s toque hats and coats to realise that this mindframe lasted quite some time, and still does to some extent.
Anyway, the "The Cage at Cranford", the actual story, starts off by placing its date firmly after 1856. It was written in 1863, when the cage-crinoline, that most notorious of mid-Victorian fashion innovations, was firmly established within general consciousness following its earliest introduction in the mid-1850s in Paris. Or if you go by Cranford chronology, some dozen years previous to that... It's a rather fundamental whoops for a modern costume drama - such ignorance might be forgiven in a 1950s or earlier piece, but nowadays when accuracy is taken so seriously, it's a terrible mistake to have made. A great piece of comedy, a most excellent story, and I laughed like a drain throughout, but taken from a fashion historian's perspective - oh dear! Hoop de do....
Having said this - the fashion historian geek in me is compelled to point out a rather appalling costuming error. There's a excellent sequence regarding a parrot and a cage-crinoline based upon a later Cranford short story by Elizabeth Gaskell.
The actual episode is set in 1844, this is made explicitly clear at the beginning. The costuming throughout is excellent in that it is so authentically dated and backwards, with the older female characters wearing styles that would have been fashionable in the late 1820s and early 1830s, and the younger women (except for the extremely fashionable, fresh-from-Paris Erminia) in late 1830s styles. This reflects the way in which rural/backwater fashions lag behind the epitome of high fashion, and how older women persisted in retaining garments that suited them most from their youth - one only has to look at Queen Mary in her 1910s toque hats and coats to realise that this mindframe lasted quite some time, and still does to some extent.
Anyway, the "The Cage at Cranford", the actual story, starts off by placing its date firmly after 1856. It was written in 1863, when the cage-crinoline, that most notorious of mid-Victorian fashion innovations, was firmly established within general consciousness following its earliest introduction in the mid-1850s in Paris. Or if you go by Cranford chronology, some dozen years previous to that... It's a rather fundamental whoops for a modern costume drama - such ignorance might be forgiven in a 1950s or earlier piece, but nowadays when accuracy is taken so seriously, it's a terrible mistake to have made. A great piece of comedy, a most excellent story, and I laughed like a drain throughout, but taken from a fashion historian's perspective - oh dear! Hoop de do....