Synopsis: Margaret Hale, from her home ground, her father's comfortably middle-class living in Hampshire and her aunt's establishment in Harley Street, is exiled to the ugly northern industrial town of Milton. Surprisingly, her social consciousness awakens. It is intensified by a relationship with the local millowner, Thornton, that combines passionate attraction with fierce opposition. The series explores the exploitation of the working class, linking the plight of workers with that of women and probing the myth and reality of the "north–south divide".