Wives and Daughters

Elizabeth Gaskell's enchanting tale of romance, scandal, and intrigue in a gossipy English town comes to Masterpiece Theatre in a lavish four-part production of Wives and Daughters, adapted by celebrated screenwriter Andrew Davies.Davies, who wrote the scripts for such Masterpiece Theatre classics as A Rather English Marriage, Moll Flanders, the House of Cards trilogy, and Middlemarch, found Wives and Daughters to be perfect costume-drama material. It posed a rather interesting problem: Gaskell died just before completing the book. She was obviously aiming at a happy ending, and Davies has supplied the lost denouement with surprise and style.