The serial is based on the 1855 Victorian novel North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell and takes place in the years surrounding the Great Exhibition of 1851.

It follows the story of Margaret Hale (Daniela Denby-Ashe), a young woman from southern England who has to move to the North after her father decides to leave the clergy.

The story explores the issues of class and gender, as Margaret's sympathy for the town mill workers clashes with her growing attraction to John Thornton (Richard Armitage).

Margaret Hale (Daniela Denby-Ashe) and her parents Maria (Lesley Manville) and Richard (Tim Pigott-Smith) live in the idyllic town in Helstone in Hampshire.

Margaret's father, a clergyman, has long harbored doubts about the doctrines of the Church of England and resigns his position rather than attest to orthodox beliefs as his bishop requires.

Gradually, Margaret gets used to Thornton, but his mother Hannah (Sinéad Cusack) and sister Fanny (Jo Joyner) disapprove of her, believing her haughty and alien to the customs of the North.

In a meeting with fellow mill owners, Thornton says he had a wheel for ventilation installed in all of the rooms of his factory in order to maintain a healthier workforce, despite the fact that it costs a great deal of money.

Margaret meets Thornton at the exhibition, where he is discussing the machinery with a group of gentlemen, all of whom are listening with great respect and admiration for his simple good sense.

As Margaret observes them together, Henry's sophistication and reliance on fashionable wit and sarcasm compares unfavourably with Thornton's honesty.

Thornton gives employment to Higgins who seeks work to care for Boucher's children after his death, and master and hand get along surprisingly well, despite their differences.

Margaret is disappointed to find Helstone much changed, and realises that she has romanticised and idealised her childhood home, and starts to truly recognise the merits of life in Milton.

As Margaret's godfather, Mr. Bell makes over his significant fortune to her when he finds out that he has a terminal illness and chooses to move to Argentina for the better climate.

Sandy Welch started adapting Elizabeth Gaskell's 1855 North and South in 2001, making a few changes to emphasise the industrial landscape of the story.

[1] In the summer of 2003 Kate Bartlett was brought to the project as a producer and a ten-week period of pre-production started at the beginning of February.

[5] Other locations were Selkirk, a town in the Scottish Borders,[6] Burnley in Lancashire, and the Bluebell Railway in Sussex, where the final and the beginning scenes were shot.

Audiences, however, were more receptive; hours after the first episode aired in November 2004, the message board of the programme's website crashed because of the number of visitors the site was receiving, forcing host bbc.co.uk to shut it down.