North and South

The scene above takes place in the first half of North and South. This couple just seems like oil and water, right. Considering how they first met when Margaret sees Mr. Thornton yelling and about to thrash one of his workers, this is something of an improvement.

The genre requires that halfway through the story the main characters be x, yet these two do seem like they'll never get together.

North and South lacks the romance of great architecture or lovely gardens one expects in a British series. No one seems allowed to wear a cheerful color in Milton. That actually works in this story; it's the point of difference that hooked me. Margaret wasn't the most beautiful woman. She couldn't be a model, but that also works in the favor of the story as you believe that she'd be down to earth and would befriend factory workers.



I expected a "two star" pretty good experience, but the more I think of it, the more I like North and South and the more I'd like to read the novel. I'd give this three and a half stars.

North and South

I’m half way through the four episodes of Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South produced by the BBC. Darker than Downton Abbey or an Austen adaptation, North and South is set in a mill town in northern England during the Industrial Revolution. Margaret Hale moves with her parents from the countryside in the south because her father, a vicar, won’t sign a paper stating he believes in the Common Prayer. So they’re uprooted to the sooty, depressing North.

They encounter Mr. Thornton, a strict factory owner, takes lessons from Mr. Hale. Margeret befriends a working class family, headed by a union organizer, preferring them to the snooty Thorntons. The series provides great visuals of work in the factories with cotton floating through the air like snow that chokes and sickens the workers. Though philosophic and ethical adversaries Mr. Thornton admires Margaret and proposes to her. He’s flatly refused. It’s not hard to guess how that relationship will fare, but I am intrigued and wonder about the workers.

It’s a fascinating drama capturing life in the Industrial Revolution.

Gaskell wrote the lighter Cranston, which I read and reviewed last fall.

Downton Abbey

Think Sense and Sensibility meets Upstairs Downstairs and you can imagine Masterpiece Theater's Downton Abbey. Set before WWI, the heir to a magnificent estate dies when the Titanic sinks. Currently, a family with three daughters of marriageable age and no sons lives in the castle. The plan had been for the oldest daughter Mary, who's a bit wild or spirited, to marry the former heir.

Enter Matthew, the third cousin who really doesn't care to take over Downton Abbey. During the course of the seven episodes of season one, we see Matthew and his mother establish themselves in the village, often in conflict with the current occupants of the house.

OF equal interest is the lives of the servants, led by a dignified butler Mr. Carson who needs to keep a close on on some of the less scrupulous members of the staff.

There's plenty of honor, dignity, backbiting, and intrigue. Oh, as for the romance, the mother and father have a sweet relationship which did start with an attraction for Mrs. Grantham's fortune. Both the family and the servants have budding romance in their midst, but no one is lucky in love.

Season two should be broadcast in the winter of 2012.