Among them are the spinster Jenkyns sisters, Matilda (called 'Matty') and Deborah their houseguest from Manchester, Mary Smith Octavia Pole, the town's leading gossip the Tomkinson sisters, Augusta and Caroline Mrs Forrester, who treats her beloved cow Bessie as she would a daughter Mrs Rose, the housekeeper for Doctor Harrison Jessie Brown, who rejects Major Gordon's marriage proposal twice despite her feelings for him Laurentia Galindo, a milliner who strongly believes men and women are on equal footing the Honourable Mrs Jamieson, a snob who dresses her dog in ensembles to match her own Sophy Hutton, the vicar's eldest daughter and surrogate mother to her three younger siblings, who is courted by Doctor Harrison and the aristocratic Lady Ludlow, who lives in splendour at Hanbury Court and perceives change as a peril to the natural order of things. Set in the early 1840s in the fictional village of Cranford in the county of Cheshire in North West England, the story focuses primarily on the town's single and widowed middle class female inhabitants who are comfortable with their traditional way of life and place great store on propriety and maintaining an appearance of gentility.

The teleplay was written by award-winning playwright and screenwriter Heidi Thomas.

Her Reluctant Groom by Rose Gordon