Nature, Culture, Space: The Melodramatic Topographies of Lark Rise to Candleford

This chapter examines the BBC drama series Lark Rise to Candleford from the point of view of melodrama, narrative space and television aesthetics. In adapting the source novels, the production team privilege locations and sets as primary narrators. While television aesthetics have frequently been neglected or dismissed by the academy, this chapter argues that the series' high production values offers fertile ground for the melodramatic modefor the exploitation of expressive mise en scene. The chapter also argues that the series uses melodrama to revise history and negotiate the transition to modernity, in so doing giving form especially to the experiences and subjectivities of women.