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.