Title: domestic scenes, historic trends
Product review: This is an especially fine piece of television drama. The screenplay is intelligent and witty, and inspires a real interest in the material and the characters. Gambon and Waddell are outstanding among an almost faultless cast. The characters of Molly and Cynthia are endearing at a human level, but also fascinating as emblems of the cultural and social changes - both limitations and possibilities - affecting women in the 19th century. Neither is a spokeswoman for any '-ism', but each provides a moving and articulate response to the greater issues of power and responsibility. The emerging scientific challenges to religious and social (and familial) orthodoxies, also explored, are dramatised neither self-consciousnessly nor by imposing a false note upon the narrative of several ordinary lives. I found this story worth savouring and re-viewing.
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