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Telegraph
14-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
How Upstairs, Downstairs created a costume drama revolution
The death of the actress and writer Jean Marsh, at the age of 90, has led to a range of tributes, all acknowledging her remarkable versatility. She was beloved among a certain section of sci-fi fandom for her various roles in Doctor Who, appearing as ill-fated companion Sara Kingdon in audio dramas well into her eighties; she appeared in an eclectic range of films that included the fantasy adventure Willow, the Second World War romp The Eagle Has Landed and Hitchcock's penultimate, grievously underrated black comic thriller Frenzy. Yet there was one show, co-created by Marsh and Eileen Atkins, that dominated her career and has, appropriately enough, led all the obituaries. Upstairs, Downstairs, ran between 1971 and 1975 and was one of the greatest television hits of the decade. When Marsh and Atkins, who knew each other through the acting circuit, first came up with the idea for the show, it was intended to be a comedy about two housemaids who worked at a country house during the Edwardian era, and had the working title Behind The Green Baize Door. The idea of making it purely humorous was swiftly dropped, but Marsh and Atkins, who literally dreamed the show up at Atkins' kitchen table, were highly simpatico when it came to what they wanted to achieve. As Marsh told this newspaper in 2010, 'We come from similar working-class backgrounds. We had a passion to show the reality. At the time we met, we still had giant-sized chips on our shoulders. Eileen's mother was a great seamstress and used to make me nightdresses with smocked tops. My mother was a maid of all work in a big pub hotel. It was a waste because she was bright and quick with figures.' It was unsurprising, then, that when the show, now going by the name of Below Stairs, was commissioned by London Weekend Television in April 1970 – having been turned down by Granada, who had put their hopes in the once-popular, now-forgotten drama A Family At War – it met with difficulties from the outset. Traditional British costume drama did not attempt to cover the fortunes of both the upper class and the working class in the same show. By and large, most networks took the attitude that it was the exploits of the glamorous, entitled aristocrats that their viewers were interested in, thereby soaking up the sense of moneyed wealth by proxy, and that the adventures of the servants were to be played for comic relief, if featured at all. This new show – which changed its title multiple times, and might have been called That House in Eaton Square, The Servants' Hall, and the inappropriately Mikado-esque Two Little Maids In Town – was wholly different in its approach. Set at the fictitious address of 165 Eaton Place, and superficially focusing on the lives and loves of the upper-class, often scandal-riddled Bellamy family, it was actually far more concerned with events 'downstairs', and treated its characters with both empathy and psychological nuance. It was the first British television show to delve into the lives of servants in the pre-war era, and tore away any idea that theirs would have been easy or enjoyable existences. Marsh took on the lead role of Rose Buck, the head parlourmaid, but Atkins, who had been earmarked to play the other maid, Sarah Moffat, was committed to a stage role, and Pauline Collins was cast instead: it would make Collins a star and lead to a long and illustrious career in television, theatre and film. It was notable that the actors who played the Bellamys (David Langton, Rachel Gurney) were respected but little-known at the time that the show was commissioned, and that the more famous performers – most notably Gordon Jackson, who played the stern, all-powerful butler Hudson – were cast as the servants, stressing the emphasis on 'downstairs'. After the first series was completed, it was immediately greeted with a mixture of consternation and confusion by the network. Not only were period costume dramas not especially popular at the start of the 1970s, but several of the storylines in the first series – most notably a subplot in which a visiting German, the splendidly named Baron Klaus von Rimmer, is not only a spy but is also having a furtive affair with the footman Alfred – were decidedly near-the-knuckle for what was theoretically cosy Sunday night family viewing. Later episodes encompassed everything from rape and suicide to the theft of an infant, and the upper classes were largely portrayed in the worst possible light throughout. The first series – set between 1903 and 1908 – did not portray the Edwardian era as a vision of a vanished England but as a grim, hypocritical place, where privilege and birth enabled its denizens to do more or less what they liked. This was, of course, entirely the point. Marsh later commented that 'I spent most of my time complaining really. I was always asking them to be more realistic downstairs.' This was not the show that LWT had been expecting, and they had sat on it for a year before deciding to broadcast it in the graveyard slot of 10.15pm on a Sunday evening. It did not help that, thanks to the labour disputes of the time, the first six episodes had to be shot in black and white, with the remaining seven episodes jarringly coming to life in colour afterwards. In order to differentiate between the two halves of the series, the first six episodes were shown in late 1971 and the rest were broadcast early the following year. Indeed, everything was against Upstairs, Downstairs from the outset, but Marsh and Atkins were convinced that they had created a show that would not only find an audience, but that that audience would respond to its unusual and penetrating examination of class politics with enthusiasm (the series was broadcast during the Heath administration, when Britain seemed to be in a state of national chaos). The first season won a Bafta for Best Drama Series, ensuring that it would be recommissioned and given the due attention that it deserved. With a team of writers including the novelist Fay Weldon, it was now a high-end, high-class show that would eventually be shown in 80 countries to as many as a billion people. Unsurprisingly, it was especially popular in the US, where it won a total of seven Emmys. Marsh – who observed that, as the character of Rose, she got more lascivious fan mail than the actresses playing the aristocrats – described its success frankly when she said of the reaction 'I am not being naive or disingenuous when I say it was beyond our wildest dreams.' There were numerous plans for spin-offs when it ended after five series in 1975, although only one authorised one was made – Thomas & Sarah (1979), which followed the exploits of the John Alderton and Pauline Collins characters after they left domestic service. The unsuccessful 1975 American show Beacon Hill was a failed attempt to take a very British series and transpose it to the Boston Brahmin milieu of the eponymous setting. The BBC, perhaps irked by the show's success, swiftly responded with The Duchess of Duke Street in 1976, which was created by Upstairs, Downstairs' producer John Hawkesworth and starred Gemma Jones as Louisa Leyton who worked her way up from humble servant to proprietor of the Bentinck Hotel in Mayfair. An obvious homage came in 2001, when the Julian Fellowes-scripted murder mystery Gosford Park was released, to enormous acclaim; Atkins and Marsh were not involved in its creation, but Atkins' appearance in it as Mrs Croft, the head cook, might be seen as a tacit blessing to the enterprise. No such approval was forthcoming for its belated spin-off, Downton Abbey, which was aired on ITV shortly before a BBC-backed revival of Upstairs, Downstairs in 2010, and entirely overshadowed it in the process. Marsh was dismissive of Downton, the show that she, more than virtually anyone else, had laid the groundwork to create. She told this paper that 'I wanted to see it because it was such a fantastic cast but I didn't go on watching because I thought I'd lose my temper. Even incidents that we had in the original, like ironing the newspapers and the Titanic, were there. My verdict? I thought it was a middle-of-the-road thing.' Indeed it is a shame that the Upstairs, Downstairs reboot – which she and Atkins both appeared in, alongside Keeley Hawes as the mistress of the house and the ever-excellent Adrian Scarborough as the butler, Mr Pritchard – was not more widely appreciated. Marsh suffered a stroke before the second series was filmed, meaning that her character was largely absent thereafter. Still, even as the final Downton Abbey film is released this year, there can be no doubt that Marsh's best-known creation caused a seismic shift in the understanding of what a costume drama could be. She remained rightly proud of this all her life. As she said in 2010, speaking about the perennial popularity of the genre, 'We still seem to want it, because if you rose out of your class, you knew you had done well. And we like it because the past is not as worrying as the news.' Fifteen years later, her words remain truer than ever.
Los Angeles Times
14-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Jean Marsh, British actress and co-creator of ‘Upstairs, Downstairs,' dies at 90
Jean Marsh, the British actress who co-created the enduring serialized hit TV series 'Upstairs, Downstairs,' died Sunday at the age of 90. The Sunday Times of London said Marsh died at her London home due to complications from dementia. Marsh gave television one of the best loved programs in history when she teamed with actress Eileen Atkins to create 'Upstairs, Downstairs,' set in a London estate during the Edwardian era. The series depicted the lives of the staff toiling downstairs at 165 Eaton Place and the wealthy Bellamy family living above. Marsh played Rose Buck, the head parlormaid in the Bellamy home. The drama made its debut on London Weekend Television in 1971 and became a major prime time series hit for PBS in 1974 when it was imported for U.S. audiences. The series depicting class distinctions in British society ran for five seasons and was revived for the BBC in 2011 with Marsh recreating her role. Marsh told NPR in 2011 that she and Atkins came up with the idea while watching a period drama on TV. 'We'd been watching something full of rich people, rich food, beautiful clothes and we had chips on our shoulders, I suppose. And we thought, 'Who did all this work? Who cooked? Who washed up?' ' she said. 'All those things we put together and thought, 'Let's write something about the downstairs people, the servants, the people who serve.' ' During its run, 'Upstairs, Downstairs' earned seven prime-time Emmy Awards, including a 1975 lead actress in a drama series win for Marsh. Jean Lyndsey Torren Marsh was born July 1, 1934 in Stoke Newington, a northwest section of London. Her father was a printer's assistant and her mother worked as a housemaid, giving her the insights she needed to write 'Upstairs, Downstairs.' (Atkins' parents also worked as household servants.) Marsh began her performing career as a teenager, appearing as a dancer in the Michael Powell-Emeric Pressburger film, 'The Tales of Hoffmann.' She made her Broadway stage debut in 1959, starring opposite John Gielgud in 'Much Ado About Nothing.' That same year she played opposite Laurence Olivier in David Susskind's TV production of 'The Moon and Sixpence' for NBC. Marsh split her time between the U.S. and London during the 1960s, with roles in the film 'Cleopatra,' and TV shows such as 'I Spy,' 'The Twilight Zone,' 'Doctor Who' and 'The Informer.' After 'Upstairs, Downstairs' became a hit, Marsh worked steadily in the U.S. and Great Britain for the next five decades. Her film roles include Alfred Hitchcock's 1972 film 'Frenzy,' and the spy drama 'The Eagle Has Landed.' She played Queen Bavmorda in Ron Howard's 1988 hit 'Willow.' Marsh also had numerous guest roles on U.S. TV series including 'Murder, She Wrote' and 'The Love Boat' and as a regular on the ABC sitcom 'Nine to Five.' In 1996, she wrote a successful romance novel, 'Fiennders Keepers,' which dealt with social change in a rural community. She played Mrs. Ferrars in a well-received 2008 TV mini-series version of 'Sense and Sensibility.' Marsh was married the late actor Jon Pertwee, who was 15 years her senior, in 1955 when she was just 20. They divorced five years later. She later lived with actors Kenneth Haigh and Albert Finney before beginning a 10-year relationship with the director Michael Lindsay-Hogg.
The Guardian
29-01-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Brian and Maggie review – it's a real worry when Margaret Thatcher seems this admirable
Brian and Maggie is a two-parter billed as a docuseries by its creators that traces the relationship between former Labour MP turned journalist Brian Walden (Steve Coogan) and Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher (Harriet Walter) and its abrupt ending, brought about by his uncustomarily scorching interview with her after chancellor Nigel Lawson's shock resignation in 1989. Written by Sherwood's James Graham, it is directed by Stephen Frears and boasts a cast full of notables fit to stand alongside Coogan and Walter. Yet it is an odd beast, perhaps because it is trying to do so much. It is partly an examination of the importance of the long-form political interview, for which Walden was famous, in a democratic society, and a lament for a bygone age when the argument for it could still be made. It is partly an examination of proximity to power and the cosiness that can develop between people who move in overlapping circles, the boundaries that can be crossed and what happens if you try to re-establish them. It's about friendship, commonalities, betrayals of many kinds. It's about 80s politics generally, Thatcherism specifically, the attraction felt for an ideologue and the ramifications when it wanes. It's about class politics too, as Walden and Thatcher bond over their own-bootstraps upbringings and earned entry into the rarefied worlds of media and politics that their publicly schooled colleagues were effortlessly ushered into. It's also a little bit about humanising rather than (further) demonising Thatcher, in showing what drove her and what she truly believed in. If she comes to look more admirable in her convictions than in previous portrayals, it is not revisionism at work but rather a measure of how extraordinarily, blatantly and provably venal and corrupt our last few crops of governing politicians have been. Are we in a bad way when Thatcher begins to look like the way and the light? Yes, yes we are. But on with the show itself. In trying to do so much, it does – as you might expect – none of it quite well enough. The friendship, or at least the growing connection and understanding, between Walden and the prime minister and the difficulties and compromises it represents as the personal, political and professional collide is the most subtly worked element. The shading of Thatcher's iconoclasm into isolation – the loneliness of rising to the top on your own terms – is convincing and (depending on where you stood in the 80s, how well you can put aside memories of the time) almost moving. But elsewhere there are great gobbets of exposition and extensive speechifying on every theme. 'We were, still are, the only ones to put the interviewee through their paces for an entire show,' says London Weekend Television producer David Cox (Tom Mothersdale) as he tries to convince Walden to take over from Peter Jay as presenter of Weekend World. 'Because political interviews ought to play a part in ordinary people's understanding of the political landscape.' Got that? Similarly clunking scenes occur between cabinet members, especially when it becomes time to explain who stands where on Europe and the exchange rate mechanism versus a floating currency. And there is the occasional simply terrible line, such as Cox's assurance to Walden as he preps for the great showdown: 'You're not a good interviewer, Brian. You're an exceptional interviewer.' It makes for a herky-jerky dramatic experience, and this is – whatever it is billed as – a drama. The 'docuseries' label is presumably demanded because verbatim extracts are performed by Coogan and Walters. But drama it is, and as drama, it fails to catch fire. This may also be due to the fact that Walden v Thatcher is not and never will be Frost v Nixon. It does not have iconic cultural status. Nobody remembers where they were when Walden asked Maggie if she was to blame for Lawson's resignation. It was not instrumental in her downfall. He was in the right place at the right time, just as the resentful man-babies were gathering to push her off the cliff. Which is not to say Brian and Maggie isn't interesting or doesn't give you plenty to think about and chew over later (including the parts of the interview in which Walden criticises her inability to show warmth, which haven't aged well in a more egalitarian age). But there is a detached, declamatory aspect to it overall that prevents the whole from triumphing. Brian and Maggie is on Channel 4 now.
