Cranford: Return to Cranford

The two-part saga Return to Cranford opens to a struggling Cranford, a t raditional English village that in autumn 1844 is airing the conflicts t hat accompany progress. Miss Matty Jenkyns (Judi Dench), after having cl osed her business in the last series, is happily babysitting the child o f her maid, Martha (Claudie Blakley). This gives the ladies in town some thing to gossip about, as does every other small event in this chatty gr oup. The same women populate this new Cranford--the snooty Miss Jamieson (Barbara Flynn), nosy Miss Pole (Imelda Staunton), Miss Forrester (Julia McKenzie), Peggy (Jodie Whittaker), and Erminia (Michelle Dockery)--wh ile a few new men added into the mix creates options for love interests throughout. In Part One, Peggy, visiting her dead father's grave, bumps into William Baxton (Tom Hiddleston), a young and dapper gentleman who b ecomes a central character in Cranford's growing divide between those wh o want a railroad coming through town and those who don't. While politic s are sorted, scenes alternate between heated public debates and intimat e domestic exchanges to make Return to Cranford as charming as the first incarnations of this historical drama. The emphasis on the ways the wom en in town navigate thorny social situations remains primary in Return t o Cranford. Babies are born and the elderly pass away while the ladies b usily decide what to make of it all. While Part One focuses on catch-up, showing where each crone stands on the latest current events, Part Two attempts more to challenge outmoded cultural values such as elitism and to show how the community members toughen up to become a courageous bunc h. Unfortunately, Miss Matty discovers that solidarity is hard to come b y in this small village, and Part Two is as much about a town falling ap art as it is about ways to heal sore feelings and a violated landscape. Ultimately, life marches on in this pleasurably fictionalized glimpse in to England's past.