Stolen Thunder

I didn’t expect to approve of the sequel of “Upstairs Downstairs” much, but surprisingly, it wasn’t bad at all. I say surprisingly because the reception of the show when it was aired seems to have been lukewarm – the reviews weren’t very complimentary, and there never was a series made after the “Christmas specials”. It turns out, though, that this drama had potential.

Of course, it wasn’t perfect, and it took a while before you became involved with the characters, but the same thing could be said for the original series. The first episode of the original “Upstairs Downstairs”, “On Trial”, was in fact pretty hard on the characters, especially the downstairs ones: Mrs Bridges and Mr Hudson were at their autocratic worst, and even Rose was spiteful and envious towards the new maid Sarah. Lady Marjorie didn’t come out of it all that well either: in fact, we never learn what Sarah’s real name is. Sarah is a name Lady Marjorie dreams up because she finds the (admittedly fake) French name the new maid goes under too fanciful for a servant. The problem with the sequel, on the other hand, was less that the initial characterisation had to be softened and nuanced than that the new arrivals seemed a little drab compared to the original crew. There was a definite turning-point, though, when the always excellent Eileen Atkins sailed in as the eccentric Lady Holland. Downstairs, the butler Pritchard – mindful of downstairs etiquette in spite of having worked his whole life on cruisers and much more sweet-natured than Hudson – was a welcome addition.

So why were the Christmas special episodes the last we saw of the new “Upstairs Downstairs”? The Thirties setting is a bit uncongenial for this kind of domestic drama, as its harsh political realities can have a tendency to invade the story too much. As it happens, I think “Upstairs Downstairs” handled the balance between the personal and the political pretty well. The storyline involving Jewish refugee Rachel, who becomes a maid at Eaton Place, is a tad Winds-of-War-ish, but it was pretty plucky to include a chauffeur who was a convinced Fascist – not because he was some poison-drooling, two-headed monster but because he was suckered into it by Mosley’s flowery rhetoric (not that different in substance from the kind of guff that would appeal to the Cosy Red Chauffeur in “Downton Abbey”). The depiction of von Ribbentrop, not as a shambolic “Pimpernel Smith” kind of Nazi but as a plausible, urbane ladykiller, also gave one a sense of the dangers that the civilised world was really up against.

What really killed “Upstairs Downstairs” make two is quite simply the existence of “Downton Abbey”. The “Abbey” has the advantage of more upstairs characters, and though the second season will probably have its fair share of what’s-it-all-in-aid-of-scenes in the trenches of WWI, it can stear well clear of the earnest predictability of the typical WWII drama. However, quality-wise, “Downton Abbey” is not that superior to “Upstairs Downstairs”. It’s just that the town ain’t big enough for two dramas with such a similar set-up (in spite of being set at different times and in the country and London respectively), and “Downton Abbey” got there first.