Cranford - Season 1 Episode 1

In June 1842, Mary Smith arrives in Cranford to stay with her mother's friends Miss Matty and Miss Deborah Jenkyns. Cranford is a small town, on the edge of modernization. The railway now reaches Manchester and there is much change in the air. The village gossips are all aflutter when the local doctor announces that his cousin's son, Dr. Harrison, will soon be joining him in his medical practice. Harrison is a young bachelor who brings new medical ideas to the community. When the local tradesman, Jem Hearne, has an accident Harrison decides to try and save his arm rather than amputate it. Mary offers to assist him in the operation. Lady Ludlow plans her annual garden party and hopes that her long-absent and spendthrift son may return from Italy. The village welcomes other new residents when Captain Brown and his two daughters, one of whom is ill, move into the house across from the the Jenkyns'.