Have you noticed how the most annoying thing about this drama is that there’s no really satisfactory short version of it’s name? I suppose you could just about get away with “Lark Rise” (although you’d have to pronounce it Lark Roise) but to do that leaves out any reference to the place where more than half the action takes place. Perhaps, like us, you tell each other it’s “time for a bit of larkin’ about” but you might not be talking about the telly. Or you could go for the spoonerism and call it Lard Rise to Candlefork which, although no shorter, is at least a bit funnier.

Anyway Lard continued to Rise this week, where the two principle messages seemed to be: “don’t cut off your nose to spite your face,” and “give the girl what she wants or she’ll buy her gates from London.”

Hot news from Candlefork (OK, I’ll stop in a minute) is that Dennis Rickman isn’t dead. He’s delivering coal to the Post Office and, in the meantime, saving young Miss Laura from being crushed to death by a falling crate of…umm…something.

Sadly when he’s not doing either of these things, he’s getting drunk on his wife’s savings and giving her a black eye. She must have known he’d be the kind of person to do this, because she’d already warned him that if he did, she’d have the magistrate on him. True to her word, with her shiner providing ample proof of the misdemeanour, that’s exactly what she does.

A few mixed messages here from the good people of Lark Rise, basically along the lines of he’s a good chap, he saved young Laura’s loife, he don’t mean no arrrrrrrm and he’s one of us, so you shouldn’t go dobbing him in to the local plod (known amusingly as Cabbage Patterson on account of him growing cabbages. They know their wit in Lark Rise. And they spread a lot of it on their vegetables). Oh, yes, and if you don’t have his wages coming in (despite the fact that he drinks most of them away) you’ll be for the workhouse.

Even the normally straight and true Emma Timmins tries to persuade Dennis’s wife Susan (who has fallen on hard times since she worked at the vets‘ ) to abandon her principles for once and give Dennis a second chance. But she’s not having any of it. “You know me better than that Emma Timmins,” she declares, which is a bit strange because we weren’t aware until this week that Emma knew her at all. In fact we’ve never seen her or her husband before.

Note to self: If a famous face from another century appears in Lark Rise (or Candleford) within the first five minutes, preferably before the opening credits, then it’s a dead cert that they will be the mainstay of the story for the week and everyone will treat them as if they’ve lived in Candleford (or Lark Rise) all their loives.

The other story, about the gates, gave Lady Adelaide Midwinter (well-named, for she’s about as frosty a woman as you’ve ever met. She even had a carol written about her) the chance for another strop. Only it wasn’t really about gates. They were just an excuse for Sir Timothy to pay daily visits to Dorcas (her of the heaving bosom, looks of deep longing, and sighs that can be heard even further away than Lark Rise. Umm…Oxford say. Or London. Those being the only other two places that exist) to “check on the progress with the gates.” I must add that to my list of acceptable 19th century euphemisms.

Anyway Sir Timothy’s gate checking expeditions are a source of constant annoyance to Lady Adelaide, because as she well knows, his duties lie much closer to home: agreeing the colour of the curtain material (*adds another euphemism to list*). Her frustration at the lack of colour agreement and the altogether too frequent gate checking boils over and affects everyone around her, to the extent that she even ventures into Candleford to declare that, although the work is very fine, she thinks she’ll source the new gates herself from…London. Or Oxford.

Thus prevented from any more gate checking, Sir Timothy’s anger is aroused and the two gentry have a stand up row where each is severely ticked off by the other and a small sherry glass is thrown to the ground and shattered. Lady Adelaide takes to her heels and gets completely lost in the countryside immediately adjacent to her house, where she’s apparently never set foot. Luckily she’s found by a passing gypsy, whereupon it turns out that Sir Timothy must have been colouring the curtains all along. The gypsy holds Lady Adelaide’s cheeks and stares deep into her eyes, which is apparently the 19th century equivalent of a Clearblue test (maybe there was a little blue line across her eyes?) and pronounces that her days of being susceptible to whatever “germ” the good Lady has caught are long gone.

They know how to talk straight in Candleford.

So all is once again well in Lady Adelaide’s world, although this does of course require more sighing on the part of Dorcas Lane, who was just about to heave her bosom once again with Sir Timothy when young Laura burst in on them with the happy news, and a knowing look.