Charming adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's 1864 chronicle of family ties, romance, and scandal set in an 1820s English country town. Our heroine is modest Molly Gibson (Waddell), whose widower doctor father (Paterson) marries ambitious Hyacinth (Annis), who has a beautiful daughter, Cynthia (Hawes), who's Molly's age. Then there's the local gentry, Squire Hamley (Gambon), and his two sons, the poetic Osborne (Hollander) and the scientific Roger (Howell). Molly becomes everyone's confidante, but also has her own secrets.