'MY SISTER does not care for the expression, 'suck,' " explains a character in the first installment of "Cranford," "Masterpiece's" latest solution for those who'd sometimes like to crawl into a small English village and pull the covers over their heads.

The speaker, Miss Matty (Judi Dench), is talking about oranges and why eating them in a certain way reminds her sister uncomfortably of babies at the breast.

In other words, it's the 1840s, Victoria's on the throne and the period when Matty's sister Deborah (Eileen Atkins) might expect to hear the word "suck" routinely used in another context is a safe 150 or so years away.

Not that all's necessarily right with her world, either.

Though PBS' three-part presentation of "Cranford," based on Elizabeth Gaskell's book of the same name and some of her other stories, would seem the perfect spot for "Masterpiece" fans experiencing Jane Austen withdrawal to retire for a few weeks, away from "Dexter's" Ice Truck Killer and other Sunday night indignities, it's not as peaceful as it looks.

Those little villages never are.

The novelist who wrote under the name Mrs. Gaskell had done her time in a town like Cranford before marrying. And while she seems to have shared Austen's keen eye for character foibles, and explored the romantic possibilities inherent in the arrival in the village of young Dr. Harrison (Simon Woods), she was more a contemporary of Charles Dickens - whose "Pickwick Papers" gets a sardonic nod in Sunday's premiere - than of Austen.

And like Dickens, she doesn't sugarcoat what some consider the good old days, especially not when it came to the people for whom things weren't so good.

So while nothing much seems to happen from day to day in Cranford, the lower classes are stirring, the more gently born are feeling the pinch of a changing economy, and the railroad is literally blasting its way through the hills around Cranford.

Miss Matty considers herself benevolent to be allowing a servant time off once a week to spend with a suitor even as a local landowner, Lady Ludlow (Francesca Annis), is going to great lengths to discourage the education of a poacher's son ("The Water Horse's" Alex Etel), fearful that a young boy's literacy will lead to revolution.

Plus, even the advanced-for-the-times methods of young Dr. Harrison can't save everyone. Villagers, young and old alike, seem to die suddenly of things we've long since learned to treat, and young women have a way of growing old while raising siblings left orphaned by childbirth.

Happily, "Cranford" never loses the opportunity for a bit of fun. You won't want to miss the cow in the long johns. Or the cat with the lace.

The real pleasure, though, especially for "Masterpiece's" core audience of Anglophiles, is seeing some of England's finest actors - Dench, Atkins, Annis, Imelda Staunton and Michael Gambon, to name a few - at play on a field large enough to show the sweep of history and small enough to showcase the all too human people who lived it.

Scheduling note: WHYY (Channel 12), ever whimsical, is planning to pre-empt Part 2 of "Cranford" on its main broadcast channel May 11 for a Mother's Day stunt involving reruns of some Austen programming, playing "Cranford" instead on a digital-only channel (though as of yesterday afternoon, they were suggesting that might change, and recommending viewers "check local listings").

If you don't have digital access, your best bet would appear to be Allentown's WLVT (Channel 39). *

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