This is a very well-made, well-cast and well-acted miniseries, based on Winifred Holtby's novel South Riding, published posthumously in 1936. There have been several adaptation of it, including a 1938 film, a 1974 TV series, a 1999 radio version, and now this 2011 adaptation.
Sarah Burton, a woman who lost her fiancé in the Great War, takes up the position of headmistress at a girls' school in Yorkshire. She clashes with various local politicians and bigwigs, despite originally being a local girl herself. Anna Maxwell Martin, who plays Sarah, is particularly outstanding, as is the young actress playing Lydia Holly (Charlie May Clark). Penelope Wilton as Mrs. Beddows is excellent as always. The male cast are also strong.
As a caution: there are some graphic scenes of horses dying (not gory, but traumatic).
It is enjoyable, and there is a happy ending for at least one character, but also an overwhelming amount of poverty, sickness and death. "It's grim oop North" did go rather frequently through my mind. Incurable madness, death in childbirth, tuberculosis, heart disease: it does become rather a roll-call of misery.
Ultimately I was left with a sense of many people's stories being unfulfilled, but perhaps that was the point. The 1998 film version (which I haven't seen) was described by one critic as: "not an altogether satisfying love story, it is more interesting as a portrait of pre-WW II life in the country". I think that would be a fair review for this 2011 adaptation as well.
