![]() ![]() ![]() Yet as the story begins in August 1939, tensions are running high, and Frances, eager to use the institute in ways that will support the war effort, manages to politically outflank Joyce, whose influence nevertheless remains formidable. The central and showiest struggle pits the amiable but strong-willed Frances Barden (“Downton Abbey’s” Samantha Bond) against Joyce Cameron (Francesca Annis), a classic upper-crust snob, accustomed to running roughshod over the women who pass through her orbit in the bustling hamlet of Great Paxford. Although the spine of the maiden six-episode run deals with the Women’s Institute, and its members finding their roles on the home front, that’s merely the hook, which, like many of these productions, methodically reels you in. So even if “Home Fires” is the “ Masterpiece” equivalent of “small ball” - similar in tone and look to, say, “Call the Midwife” - the outbreak of the war, against the backdrop of a small British village, provides an extremely fertile environment for soapy doings. The embers from World War II burn so brightly that there are an endless number of ways to revisit it. ![]()
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