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Daily Record
9 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Record
BBC period drama hailed 'perfect watching' as fans say it's 'better than Call The Midwife'
The beloved show boasts a star studded cast and is now available to stream on Amazon. A popular period drama named Lark Rise to Candleford has received rave reviews from fans of the show, which has been compared to the hit BBC medical drama Call the Midwife. The programme is set in 19th-century Oxfordshire and follows the story of a young girl who moves to a local market town in the county and starts an apprenticeship as a postmistress. It is an on screen adaptation of Flora Thompson's memoir of her Oxfordshire childhood, set in the small hamlet of Lark Rise and the wealthier neighbouring market town Candleford. Lark Rise to Candleford boasts various well-known British actors in its cast. The stars include Linda Bassett, who played Nurse Phyllis Crane in Call the Midwife and Victoria Hamilton, who has starred in multiple period dramas including The Crown and Victoria and Albert. Lark Rise to Candleford was broadcasted on the BBC between 2008 and 2011 and all four seasons are now available to stream on Amazon Prime video and Apple TV. The series, which has a total of 40 episodes, has an impressive 8.2 rating on IMDb across its four seasons with fans hailing it as "perfect" viewing, the Express reports. One particularly impressed viewer penned on the platform:"After Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre and this winter's Cranford, I thought that the BBC couldn't do any better: that it had reached its peak. Boy, was I wrong. "I was apprehensive about watching Lark Rise because of this, but those doubts were removed immediately as I fell in love with all the characters, especially Julia Sawalha, who surpasses herself, obviously moving away from her most famous role as Lydia Bennett in Pride and Prejudice, and she does so delightfully." Another chimed in: "I discovered this delightful little show during one of my many inpatient vacations in the hospital when I was struggling with End Stage Kidney Disease. "It truly was one of the things that helped me through the worst times..." A third enthusiastic viewer added: "This is one of the best series I've ever seen on BBC. I was gorged on watching all 40 episodes on BritBox, which I just adore. "The series is very well filmed, with fantastic actors and actresses." Another fan, who gave the show top marks, remarked: "This is the best of the best costume dramas, and perhaps the best BBC production!!!! "The acting, the set, the costumes, the story line, and lessons learned about dealing with life/people issues in a fun yet serious fashion." However, it is not the only popular period drama which is currently available to stream on Amazon. Viewers are also raving about an 'incredible' six-part period drama series, which was written by Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes. The programme, Belgravia, is set in the 19th century and takes its initial bow at an event that is engraved in history - the Duchess of Richmond's ball of June 1815, a notable affair just days before the Battle of Waterloo. Centring on the intrigues of the Trenchard and Bellasis families, the series dives headfirst into familiar territory for devotees of period drama, complete with clandestine scandals, high-society relationships, and the intricate dance of class politics.
New Statesman
30-04-2025
- General
- New Statesman
Fruitcake has long been a part of British celebrations
A journalist contacted me recently, wanting to know what I thought about a campaign to add cask ale to Unesco's list for Intangible Cultural Heritage. Along with most Brits, I suspect, I had no idea such a list existed. Britain only last year ratified the convention, which attempts to safeguard significant traditions. Culinary entries include Belgian beer, Singaporean hawker cuisine, the French gastronomic meal, and couscous from the Maghreb. While applauding the campaigners, in the end I concluded that there were British food traditions just as ancient and precious as cask beer, but a tiny bit more – how can I put this – universal? Women have brewed beer in the home and the farmhouse for centuries, but they were edged out of commercial brewing in the medieval period. Although the hospitality industry today can be magnificently welcoming, historically inns and taverns haven't been particularly friendly to women. (Food historians hold long grudges.) There are more universally produced and consumed foodstuffs. My top contender for Unesco's list would be fruitcake, closely followed by cheese. Perhaps I just have the blessing of fruitcake, with its curranty explosions, citrussy backchat and toffeeish depth on my mind at the moment. As women have for centuries before me, I am making what used to be called a 'bride cake' for my forthcoming wedding. Fruitcake has been at the heart of every British celebration for as long as cooks have had 'plums' – dried fruit – and sugar. ('Plum' in the context of cake means something desirable, as in 'a plum job' – not the fresh fruit. Asking his mother to send him something to help curry favour at boarding school, Vanity Fair's George Sedley Osborne specifies: 'Please not a seed-cake, but a plum-cake.') For holy and festival days, bakers added dried fruits and warm spices to bread, which used 'barm' or ale-yeast, created in the brewing process, to help them rise. The novelist Flora Thompson described how, to make 'harvest cakes', the late-Victorian Oxfordshire housewives gave a basin of 'raisins and currants, lard, sugar and spice' to the baker, who added dough and returned it 'beautifully browned… and delicious'. Some barmbracks and bara briths (and buns of the hot, cross variety, of course) are still made with yeast. Most, however, following the discovery of some culinary genius, now use the magic of beaten eggs to lighten flour, sugar and butter. Fruitcake maps on to a peculiarly British geography. 'Every country town, village and rural neighbourhood in England, Scotland and Ireland has its favourite holiday cake, or currant loaf… the formula is endless – and they are all good,' praised the Scottish writer Christian Isobel Johnstone (under the pseudonym Margaret Dods) in 1826. Fruitcakes are accommodating about time and date as well as place. The Twelfth Night cake shuffled back a few days to Christmas, when that took over as the major celebration in the 19th century. The simnel cake and its 11 little marzipan balls (and, if you are lucky, a layer of marzipan baked into the centre) does for both Easter and Mothering Sunday. There is munificence in a fruitcake; it will go round a sizeable family, a gang of harvest workers, or any number of guests. It has extraordinary staying power; every so often a story pops up about the sale at auction of a slice of Queen Victoria's wedding cake from 1840 – still identifiable, if not exactly appetising. I would happily offer an olive branch to the beer campaigners by suggesting we add to Unesco's list the northern triumvirate: fruitcake with a wedge of tangy cheese and a dark, heady ale. However, it looks as if any UK campaign to get something on to the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage would be fruitless. Although we have ratified the convention, celebrating specific items or customs from the UK is, in the opinion of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, 'neither desirable or beneficial'. Which might be why Britain is better known for Yes, Minister and other political satires than for our culinary traditions. Pen Vogler is the author of 'Stuffed: A History of Good Food and Hard Times in Britain' (Atlantic) Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe [See also: Louis Theroux: The Settlers is a deathly warning] Related
