Mrs Gaskell novel makes four-part serial

Press, 12 January 1981, Page 13

Mrs Gaskell novel makes four-part serial

The four-part serial, “North and South,” dramatised from the novel of a well-loved British author, Mrs Gaskell, will begin screening tomorrow afternoon on Network Two.

Directed by Rodney Bennett and dramatised by David Turner, it penetrates the new forces and problems in the industrial North of Victorian Britain. It presents an unsentimental picture of their effects on a young girl from the South as she is exposed to life in a busy industrial town, and how her emotions are affected hv the

people living there — in particular the owner of a large mill. After 10 years in fashionable London, Margaret Hale is looking to returning to her father’s peaceful vicarage in Hampshire. Her delight is short-lived when he announced that he ,is resigning. and when the Hales move north to Milton, Margaret finds herself living an altogether different life and developing a rather different set of ideals.

Margaret Halle is played by the young actress, Rosalind Shanks* and John Thornton (the i mill owner) by Patrick Stewart, wellknown for his nerform-

ances with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Mrs Thornton is played by Rosalie Crutchley, whose many television appearances range from “Charley’s Aunt” to Madame Defarge in “A Tale of Two Cties,” Mr Hale is played by Robin Bailey, of “The Pallisers” and’ “Uncle Mort” in the comedy series. “I Didn’t Know you Cared.” The novelist, Mrs Gaskell. was born in 1810 at Chelsea. She spent most of her youth further north, in Cheshire, then in 1832 married a Unitarian minister in Manchester. She produced a great number of works, in-

eluding “Life In Manchester," "The Moorland' Cottage.” “Wives and Daughters,” and “A Life of Charlotte Bronte.”

With insights from her work as a minister’s wife, she had a fresh and unprejudiced view of workers’ conditions, trade unionism, and the relation of town to country.

Her surprisingly up-to-date opinions on the position of women, the sublimation of passion, and the stifling effects of family life and religion, all combined to make her work seem much less “Victorian” than that of many of her contemporaries.