North & South

Actors: Daniela Denby-ashe, Richard Armitage, Sinead Cusack, Tim Pigott-smith
Rated: NR
Release Date: 2004
​Run Time: 233 minutes

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Sex & Nudity - 1/10 (Low cut dresses, kissing scene)
Violence & Gore - 2/10 (Beaten worker, riot scene)
​Profanity - 2/10 (A couple instances of h*ll, d*mn, g*d)

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​North & South is a splendid, four-hour adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's 19th century novel about an unlikely, and somewhat star-crossed, love between a middle-class young woman from England's cultivated south and an intemperate if misunderstood industrialist in a hardscrabble, northern city. Daniela Denby-Ashe plays Margaret Hale, forthright and strong-willed daughter of a former vicar (Tim Pigott-Smith) who relocates his family from a pastoral village outside London to unforgiving, largely illiterate Milton, a factory town where John Thornton (Richard Armitage) and his mother (Sinead Cusack), survivors of poverty, rule their cotton mill with an iron hand. Thornton befriends Margaret's father but incurs her wrath for his severity with his workers. What she doesn't notice is Thornton's core sense of responsibility for his employees' welfare. On the other hand, he misinterprets some of Margaret's own actions and intentions. Equally stubborn, the two drag out their obvious attraction over many painful months and events.