I love PBS and the work they put on TV, because it is usually fun to watch and also because, unlike much of mainstream television, their shows can usually be counted on to be something I can watch with my parents. (A lessening commodity, let me assure you.) My parents – my mother in particular – are very selective about what they will and won’t watch, and in an era where swearing and sex are becoming more commonplace on broadcast television, PBS usually pulls through for me with something that has no swearing, no sex, and no dubious scenes in dubious places like dark allies, strip clubs or seedy bars. It helps that my mom likes period dramas, too. So, after I dragged my sister through the first season of Downton Abbey (which I think she likes – she could just be putting up with me) and declared that I would have the TV Sunday night to watch the second season or perish without, my mom came down and watched the season opener with us. And, in a fashion true to my mother, when the whole thing was over, she asked, “So, when’s the next one?”
Picture me at this point beaming in joy.
Of course, when the second season is over and we have to go back to our lives without the shenanigans of Matthew, Mary, and the rest of the Crawleys, I will have to find something else for my mother to watch. (She and my father complained at the end of the first season of Cranford, and the second season couldn’t come fast enough for them.) And being the plugged-in person I am, I’m compiling a list of (PBS approved) shows that I’ve watched in the past and wouldn’t mind watching again. So, without further ado, the list!
1. (The Original) Upstairs Downstairs (ITV/PBS, 1971-1975)
There has been much dirt thrown between the Upstairs Downstairs reboot people and the Downton Abbey folks, but it does bear saying that Downton Abbey is cast from the same clay as the 1970s PBS series. That fact cannot be denied. I still maintain that Downton is much more interesting that the recent remake of this beloved show, but the original is definitely worth watching at least once, if not two or three times. Upstairs Downstairs follows the adventures of the Bellamy family upstairs at 165 Eaton Place, London, and the lives of their servants downstairs as they deal with the turn of the century, the end of Victorian England and the beginning of the Edwardian age. (Interestingly enough, the Earl of Grantham’s sister Lady Rosamund Painswick is said to have a house in Eaton Square. I smell an imminent crossover fanfic.)
My mother claims that when this show was first on in the 70s her mother refused to let her watch it on the grounds that it held some scenes of a dubious nature. I watched it all several summers ago and was not at all fazed by the plot, but I am not my grandmother, and a servant getting with child out of wedlock, broken engagements, the first World War, and shell shock do not shake me. The cast was wonderful, the stories were alive and engaging, and there were some really first rate performances throughoutthe show’s run. I shall forever love David Langton’s Richard Bellamy, who gave a new meaning to the idea of the silver fox and who deserves a lot of really ravishing fanfiction, and Gordon Jackson’s Mr. Hudson, the loveable and peppery butler, was the type of character I should have loved to have spent time under as a housemaid, a demanding taskmaster but truly compassionate besides.
2. The Duchess of Duke Street (BBC/PBS, 1976-77)
When it first came out, this series was accused of trying to ride on the success of Upstairs Downstairs, and to be sure, both shows feature a similar format – a house with servants below and a family of sorts upstairs, trying to deal with life in the Edwardian period. The title character, Louisa Leyton, enters the series as a lowly assistant cook with high ambitions – to become the best chef in London. A big goal in an era when it is universally acknowledged that while women can be cooks, only men have the artistic flair and panache required to be chefs. Through a series of complicated events, she becomes the proprietor of a hotel with its own ménage of interesting guests, servants, and family. The series was based on the life of Rosa Lewis, the proprietor of the famous Cavendish Hotel, a woman who was sometimes titled ‘the Duchess of Jermyn Street’ for the way she held court over the men who came to admire her cooking (and her good looks). I watched this before seeing Upstairs Downstairs, and the memories of it are a bit hazy, but I do remember liking the passionate and spunky performance put in by Gemma Jones as Louisa.
3. To Serve Them All My Days (BBC/PBS, 1980)
If the end of World War One does for Matthew Crawley what it does for David Powlett-Jones, the protagonist of To Serve Them All My Days, I will be a happy fangirl indeed. I watched this miniseries several years ago and loved it so much I went and found the book by R.L. Delderfield upon which it was based. My copy, interestingly enough, is the tie-in version published for the series on “Mobil Masterpiece” as it was then called. (My, how times have changed.) TSTAMD follows the life of young Mr. Powlett-Jones as he returns from World War One a shell-shocked wreck of a twenty-two year old whose doctor has recommended fresh air and an enclosed community as the best hope for recovery. He begins teaching at a public school in Devon called Bamfylde under the auspices of a wonderfully jolly headmaster, Herries, and shepherds several generations of troublemakers and brownnosers alike through the joys of studying and examining history.
Delderfield was criticized for his flat characterizations in the novel, but I’ve never found any of his cast wanting in any respect of character. The miniseries was excellent, with top-notch performances by Alan MacNaughton as Mr. Howarth, the crusty and proud English professor and Frank Middlemass as Mr. Herries, as well as a particularly good bit of casting for the parts of several of the students who make up PJ’s cadre at school. (My favorite is always Boyer, a scoundrel with a good deal of charm who, just missing the action of World War One at the beginning of the series as a troublemaker in the 4th form, ends up enlisting at the end of the series in World War Two as a well-rounded young man of nearly 30.) This show also introduced me to the sound of spoken Welsh. Watch it for nothing else than that, if you must. John Duttine’s simple, scared young PJ is absolutely adorable rambling on in Welsh cadence. As is the terribly British and schoolmastery Carter, played by Neil Stacy.
Many of these shows are Edwardian in word and deed, but PBS has a treasure trove more set in the 1920s that I intend to preview for you! Any suggestions from the peanut gallery would be appreciated as well!
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