Mrs Gaskell's novel relates how more branches were planned for Stockport and Wilmslow. The ladies who run Cranford use Johnson's Universal Stores as their main gathering point. National Trust village Lacock in Wiltshire stood in for Knutsford, helping to show on screen what was about to be lost in the onward march of the industrial revolution. It would have cost so much to take all that out before we even started," explains Sue.
"It's impossible to film there because so much modernisation has been done. Unfortunately, Knutsford could not be used as the main location. An actor, who shall remain nameless, arrived and they all said, `Do you mean you're not in Cranford?' People were fighting to get on it." Greg Wise said that he went into a pub frequented by actors. They are very good parts for very good actors. They're lucky if they get her for three days. "Judi put aside the whole 15 weeks," reveals Sue. Dame Judi kept faith and stayed attached to the project until it finally began shooting earlier this year. But in 2005, part of the money needed to go ahead with the production fell through and filming was postponed. "In the end there were so many that we had to lay them on the floor, all the way down the sitting room and out through the hall."Īlmost two years later the screenplay was written. Taking a lead from the writers of ER, they sat in New York, putting story ideas on different cards, with each character having their own colour. She then enlisted the help of co-producer Susie Conklin, who is based in America. It'll need an enormous cast of leading actors and we haven't got one word on paper yet.' And to her credit, she commissioned it there and then." "I said `I've got this fantastic idea for a huge drama serial. Sue approached BBC drama boss Jane Tranter. Those two aunts appear again and again in her short stories and novels." "Her mother died when she was a baby and her father sent her to be looked after by maternal aunts in Knutsford. Then it occurred that she quite often wrote about the same people, under different names and with slight differences. But I felt it wasn't enough to sustain as a big drama serial. "Cranford was originally commissioned for a monthly magazine and it was very popular. "It's about seven years ago that somebody said to me, `Why don't you do Cranford?' Although I come from barely seven miles from where Elizabeth Gaskell lived, I'd never heard of her until after I left school. "The gestation period for Cranford has been longer than an elephant's," she laughs.
#S CRANFORD CHARLOTTE BUSINESS JOURNAL TV#
That new railway is pushing its way ever closer, bringing fears of migrant workers and the breakdown of law and order.Ĭheshire-born Sue also worked on BBC1 hit Pride and Prejudice and the 1999 TV adaptation of Mrs Gaskell's novel Wives and Daughters. It begins in the summer of 1842 and tells the story of a year in the life of the small Cheshire town on the verge of change. The drama has an all-star premiere in London tonight, ahead of its debut on BBC1 from 9pm this Sunday. "I think Gaskell's novels have been adapted phenomenally well." "It's just beautifully done and it was hugely good fun," says Judi. Those 22 leading actors are headed by Dame Judi Dench, who plays Miss Matty Jenkyns, and include Philip Glenister, Francesca Annis, Dame Eileen Atkins, Julia Sawalha, Sir Michael Gambon and Imelda Staunton. A friend of both Charles Dickens and Charlotte Bronte, she married the Rev William Gaskell, of Cross Street Unitarian Church in Manchester, and they lived at Plymouth Grove, Longsight. "The guy who organised the transport came to me and said, `I've worked on huge feature films but never in my life have I had to get so many leading actors to the first day of set at the same time.' This is the BBC stretching its limbs and making a jewel in the crown."Ĭranford is based on three novels by Elizabeth Gaskell - Cranford, My Lady Ludlow and Mr Harrison's Confessions - with fresh material woven in by screenwriter Heidi Thomas.īorn in London, Mrs Gaskell was raised in Knutsford, which she called Cranford in her novel.
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"I didn't realise quite how big the programme was until the first day," recalls Sue Birtwistle, producer of £8m five-part serial Cranford. THE Manchester railway is on track to arrive in Cheshire as a landmark TV period drama comes to the screen.
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