And so we come to the end of one of the BBC’s very best productions of the whole year. If TV Scoop’s Top 50 of 2007 were compiled by myself alone, it would have found itself in joint first place along with the very different, but equally brilliant Life On Mars (a good year for Philip Glenister, then).

Yes, I’m afraid you’re going to have to sit through another review filled with superlatives and gushing priase for this, the last episode of the mini-series. Hearts were reconciled, lives were saved and lost, families were reunited – and your heart-strings were in a sorry state by the end of it all.

After just four episodes there were many storylines to be wrapped up, and the greatest achievement of this episode was to do that tidily and beautifully without having to rush through anything. One storyline affected another, one person’s loss was another’s gain, and the good hearts of Cranford generally received the happiness they so thoroughly deserve.

Let’s take one storyline at a time. Jessie Brown, daughter of the gruff but kindly captain, has been nursing a broken heart ever since she turned down the love of her life, Major Gordon, to look after her father. But, thanks to Mary Smith (without whom you wonder how Cranford ever survived), he returns – and not alone. In a past episode we heard of Peter, the brother of Matty and Deborah who left for India many years ago and has only been heard of once. Again thanks to Mary’s intervention, he came back to Miss Matty, bringing the wedding muslin he had promised in that one letter he had sent.

This type of family reunion and neat resolution was a reminder that Cranford is in fact based on a Victorian text – it had been easy to forget, sometimes. It is a little contrived, of course, and a little melodramatic, but surely no viewer could begrudge these characters a happy ending?

With the passing of Mr. Holbrook, Miss Matty has missed her chance to wear the muslin of course – but perhaps another wedding is on the cards? Well, after last week’s mix-up over who Dr Harrison had in fact been courting, chances looked slim, and with Sophy now dreadfully ill (and Harrison banned from her house) almost an impossibility. But her little sisters eventually came to the rescue, by running to Dr Harrison’s house and inviting him to tend to her. “Who sends for me?” he asks; “We do.” Unsurprisingly, with Sophy brought back from the brink of death, (and another bit of detective work by Mary) Reverend Hutton is then more than happy to give his blessing to the marriage. There is also the hint, of course, that wedding bells could soon be in the air for Mary and Dr Marshland, too…

And so to the final storyline to be resolved, and, for me, perhaps the most affecting. Lady Ludlow has mortgaged the house, against Mr. Carter’s advice, to avoid having to sell off part of the land to the railway firm, and the slow transformation of our feelings towards her continued, as we learned that she keeps so many staff (to the detriment of her own finances) simply to keep citizens of her estate out of the workhouse. With Mr Carter reconciled to the fact that Lady Ludlow will not sell her land, he goes down to the railway works to ask if he can sell to them anything from the estate to make a little money. The scene, so industrial and bleak, feels strange and wrong from the start, and sure enough an explosion occurs in a matter of moments.

Mr Carter is taken to Dr Harrison, and comforted by his new friend and possible love, Miss Galindo, but nothing can be done. When Lady Ludlow reads out his will to Harry, who had effectively become Carter’s adoptive son, it becomes clear that he has remembered everything and everyone. Harry receives the whole of Carter’s considerable estate, but all of the money (apart from £1000 for his education) must go to Lady Ludlow to pay off her mortgage until he comes of age, at which point it is to be repaid to him, with interest. And with that money, Harry should found a school in Cranford. “I thought you didn’t want that” he says to Lady Ludlow. “I didn’t,” she replies, “but that does not mean that I was correct.”

In other words, all of the ends were tied up, mostly happily, and even out of the sad death of the quietly heroic Mr Carter comes a great amount of good; a massive change for Cranford, but one they are more than happy to accept.

Episode One
Episode Two
Episode Three
Episode Four
TV Scoop’s Television Top 50 2007: Number 5: Cranford