Good thing Judi Dench has a healthy sense of humor.

The Oscar winner, 73, stars in PBS' "Cranford," a miniseries set in an 1840s English village. She's one of a gaggle of busybodies, and as the saga unfolds, villagers drop dead left and right.

When a question arises about surviving for the sequel — 2009's "Christmas in Cranford" — Dench assumes her own longevity is being called into question.

"Well, I certainly hope I'm alive," she says with a slightly uncomfortable laugh.

Once she realizes it's her character who's in question, her little laugh becomes an outright guffaw. "Oh, that is funny," she says, assuring that she will take part in the follow-up.

In a suite at the Four Seasons Hotel, Dench is finishing the last of some hot chocolate with a side of miniature marshmallows. She has flown to L.A. for just a few days from her English country home on the border of Surrey and Sussex.

She tells how, in the VIP lounge at Heathrow before her flight, a man tapped her on the shoulder and told her he was going to inspect the plane for safety. It was Pierce Brosnan, who played 007 to her M in four James Bond films. "Please do," Dench told Brosnan, playing along. "Let me know if it's safe."

In November, she'll be seen for the second time with the latest Bond, Daniel Craig, in "Quantum of Solace," her sixth Bond adventure. She spent four weeks shooting in London plus a week in Panama. This time, M will be giving Bond "a much harder time," she says. "It's gloves off!"

Things are far more restrained in the sleepy village of Cranford. Dench remembers reading the "Cranford" series of books by Elizabeth Gaskell when she was a schoolgirl.

"It's wonderfully intimate and the antithesis of parts I've been playing," Dench says. She's one of two spinster sisters who sacrifice joy for the sake of appearances. Michael Gambon co-stars as a lover with whom she reunites decades after she turned down his marriage proposal.

It is a bittersweet love story that mirrors the real-life loss in 2001 of Dench's husband of 30 years, actor Michael Williams. Dench believes Williams' spirit still visits from time to time. "Funny enough, quite often," she says. "In my house."

Five months after his death, a mole in her garden crossed her path. She believes it may have been Williams, who played a mole opposite her ferret in a 1972 Stratford production of "The Wind in the Willows." "I'd never seen a mole anywhere," she says. "We lifted it away, and then it came back again."

Since then, Dench has not entertained the thought of dating, though that hasn't stopped the British tabloids from speculating. Not long ago she was photographed with her "Iris" and "Notes on a Scandal" director, Richard Eyre — the husband of "Cranford" writer/producer Sue Birtwistle." "And by God — wasn't it in the paper, asking, 'Is this my new man?' " Dench says with a chuckle.

"Poor Sue. But I thought it was very, very funny."

A colorful dame in more ways than one, Dench was dubbed "Dame Judi" by Queen Elizabeth in 1988. Though people routinely make the mistake of calling her "Dame Dench" instead of the proper form, she says with a shrug, "I don't care what I'm called."

She was also the recipient of an Oscar for 1998's "Shakespeare in Love" and has been nominated for five other roles, including "Mrs. Brown" (1997) and "Notes on a Scandal" (2006). She is now in line to take on the designer role in "Nine," the movie adaptation of the Broadway musical to be directed by Rob Marshall ("Chicago").