The second instalment of the BBC’s wonderful costume drama Cranford opened very quietly last night with the visit of Major Gordon, who from the first was clearly very enamoured with Jessie. With very little encouragement they took up the pianoforte, Jessie accompanying the Major in a rendition of Loch Lomond.

“I think it helped that you beat the time with your spoon,” the Major remarked to Miss Deborah Jenkyns as they left the Brown’s. “I always do when the music transports me,” replied Miss Deborah, thus reminding us within the first five minutes why Cranford is such a treasure. Before I continue over the turn, if you want to catch up on Cranford, read more reviews here.

Examples of Mrs Gaskell’s humour flowed like a golden thread through this episode. The reaction of the ladies to having a carpet in the room, with Matty trying desperately to protect it from fading by casting sheets of paper over it whenever the sun came out (“such an enterprise!”) and everyone being very careful to walk on those papers to avoid dirtying the rare artefact, was a fine example.

But the wonderful 19th century prose is also enhanced by Sue Birtwistle and Susie Conklin’s excellent production and Heidi Thomas’ writing, and it’s never long before the harsh realities of life in Cranford return to remind us that all was not sweetness and light back then.

Who could fail to be moved by the fine sentiments of Major Brown when pressing his suit with Jessie after waiting patiently for many years. “I thought the ring that held all my old hopes with it would be best.” Pay attention at the back – these are pearls! But, having nursed first her mother and then her sister, Jessie feels the weight of duty upon her again in looking after her father, and so refuses the Major for a third time. I imagined thousands of young ladies angrily screaming at their tellies that she was mad, and should go with him to India, but this is England in the 1840s and a woman’s duty came before any thought of personal happiness, especially in Cranford.

We’re not allowed to stay maudlin for long though. Not when faced with the apparition of Bessie the cow dressed up in grey flannel after her adventure in the lime pit. And not when we’re given a glance at things to come as Matty’s old beau Thomas Holbrook makes an all-too-brief appearance at the garden party.

Have you noticed how remarkable the timing of the broadcast of this wonderful drama is? With the tabloids screaming that Britain is under threat of mass immigration from the poorer areas of the EU, here we have Cranford, mirroring that threat in anachronistic microcosm through the imminent arrival of the train from Manchester. Now that Sir Charles Maulver is on the verge of selling land to the railway company, it will come within a mile of Cranford and, as Miss Galindo observed, encourage the lower orders to move about. How awful!

And how threatening to the ladies of Cranford, who only moments before had reflected how “all around us England shifts and changes, while Cranford stands fast.”

Sadly, in the end, at least two small parts of Cranford didn’t stand fast. Miss Deborah, feeling the acute stress of the railway’s invasion, returned home to suffer (what I assume was) a fatal stroke, and Sophy Hutton’s youngest brother did not recover from his bout of croup despite the best attentions of Dr Harrison.

Review of Episode 1.