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TV Gallery: Cranford's Bonnets | reviews, news & interviews

TV Gallery: Cranford's Bonnets

TV Gallery: Cranford's Bonnets

A pictorial display of the bonnets and leading ladies of Cranford

Hats on: Dame Judi Dench as Miss Matty JenkinsAll photographs by Laurence Cendrowicz

It's sometimes referred to, just a bit dismissively, as bonnet drama. Whenever television visits the 19th century, the headwear of the female characters does indeed play its part. Of no adaptation of Victorian fiction is that truer than Cranford. The actresses wearing the bonnets are fairly resplendent too.

This Christmas they are queueing up to appear in Heidi Thomas's new dramatisation set in Mrs Gaskell's quiet Cheshire town. Our gallery celebrates the bonneted British actresses of Cranford, to amplify director Simon Curtis's description elsewhere in theartsdesk of working on the new series.

  1. Michelle Dockery as Erminia Whyte
  2. Imelda Staunton as Miss Octavia Pole
  3. Claudie Blakley as Martha Hearne
  4. Julia McKenzie as Mrs Forrester
  5. Emma Fielding as Miss Galindo
  6. Celia Imrie as Lady Glenmire
  7. Lesley Sharp as Mrs Bell
  8. Lisa Dillon as Mary Smyth
  9. Francesca Annis as Lady Ludlow
  10. Jodie Whittaker as Peggy Bell
  11. Barbara Flynn as Mrs Jamieson
  12. Deborah Findlay as Miss Tomkinson

[bg|/TV/jasper_rees/Cranford_gallery]

Cranford is on BBC One this Sunday at 9pm and then on Sunday 27 December.

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