It’s Upstairs, Downton or how the BBC’s big new drama will have a familiar feel
Downton Abbey has been gone from our TV screens for only three weeks, but still we feel bereft without its soothing Sunday-evening presence. Happily, there’s another aristocratic costume extravaganza on the way — the long-awaited return of Upstairs Downstairs on BBC1.
The original became one of the most popular television series of all time, watched by 30million people in 50 countries and running for 68 episodes on ITV from 1971 to 1975.
With its ground-breaking exploration of the class tensions and sexual scandals between servants and gentry in the face of a rapidly changing society, it inspired a host of later costume dramas — including Downton Abbey, written by Julian Fellowes.
The new incarnation of Upstairs Downstairs takes up the story of 165 Eaton Place in 1936, six years after the original ended. The BBC decided to bring it back with the help of American backers at the same time as ITV opted to make Downton Abbey, which was initially due to be shown next year.
However, in the end — and to the BBC’s huge frustration — Downton was shown first and became a phenomenal success, attracting more than nine million viewers.
There are fears Downton Abbey may have stolen the new show’s thunder. ‘The cast and crew of Upstairs Downstairs are very annoyed that Downton was shown first; they know the two shows are very similar,’ said a source.
The lavish updated version of Upstairs Downstairs stars Keeley Hawes and Dame Eileen Atkins and is due to be shown in three hour-long episodes over the Christmas period.
As our exclusive preview and pictures reveal here, it looks certain to be just as popular — even though the parallels between the two shows are positively uncanny…
The headstrong young lady
Like Elizabeth Bellamy in the original Upstairs Downstairs, Downton’s Lady Sybil Crawley was the family rebel, fiercely political and with a disdain for what society expected of her.
She attended rallies in support of the Suffragettes’ fight for women’s rights and socialism, even putting herself in danger for her causes.
In the new Upstairs Downstairs, the young, stunning rebel is Lady Persephone, the younger sister of Lady Agnes, and played by Little Dorrit’s Claire Foy.
Just like Lady Sybil, Lady ‘Persie’ refuses to abide by the rules and becomes a female Blackshirt, joining the British Union of Fascists. Her story echoes that of Diana Mitford, the society beauty who married fascist leader Oswald Mosley.
The butler’s dark past
Ruling the roost downstairs at Downton were Mr Carson, the stoic, loyal butler, Mrs Hughes, the unsentimental but decent housekeeper, and Mrs Patmore, the cook who ran the kitchen with a rod of iron.
Head of the below-stairs hierarchy in Upstairs Downstairs is butler Mr Pritchard, played by Adrian Scarborough. Just like Mr Carson, he is loyal and dependable — and has a ‘dark past’ which echoes both Carson’s shameful theatrical history
and the murky secrets of Downton’s redoubtable valet, Bates.
Jean Marsh is the only member of the original Upstairs Downstairs cast to return in the new version, reprising her role as Rose. The former parlourmaid is now housekeeper — and moral, kind and hard-working to boot.
The Upstairs cook Mrs Thackeray, played by Anne Reid, is — unsurprisingly — just as blunt with her staff as her Downton equivalent.
The maid with plans
Downton’s Gwen worked as a housemaid purely because it was the only profession open to the daughter of a farm worker.
She wanted to move up in the world — an ambition frowned upon in an era in which servants were expected to know their place. But by the end of the series, her determination had paid off and she had won a new job as a secretary.
Ivy, the parlourmaid of Upstairs Downstairs, played by Ellie Kendrick, is also defiant, young and spirited. Described as being ‘as sharp as a cartload of monkeys’, she is expected to reflect how once rigid social hierarchies were crumbling by the Thirties, and rails against her position in life.
The exotic visitor
A scandal was narrowly averted when Downton Abbey house guest, Turkish diplomat Kemal Pamuk, died while in bed with Lady Mary Crawley, forcing the Countess and a maid to carry the body into his own room before anybody found out.
In Upstairs Downstairs, the foreign visitor causing a stir will be the glamorous Wallis Simpson (Emma Clifford), the American divorcee for whom King Edward VIII abdicated.
Also featuring in the new episodes will be an appearance from Joachim von Ribbentrop, the future foreign minister of Nazi Germany.
The grand dame
Downton Abbey’s formidable matriarch Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham, played to imperious perfection by Dame Maggie Smith, became its best-loved character.
Upstairs Downstairs’ leading female character is the equally indomitable Lady Maud Holland, a free-thinking intellectual played by another theatre Dame, Eileen Atkins.
With Jean Marsh, Dame Eileen thought up the concept of the original Upstairs Downstairs, although she didn’t appear in it.
A source says: ‘At first Dame Eileen wanted to be the cook, but was told she’d have to commit to three years. Then she was worried about Lady Maud being too similar to Maggie Smith’s countess, so she asked that she have a pet monkey, an Indian secretary and wear trousers to be different.’
Coincidence, of course, that Lady Sybil daringly sported pantaloons too in one scene in Downton.
The master and mistress
Robert, Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) and his wife Cora, the Countess (Elizabeth McGovern) were the dashing master and glamorous mistress of Downton.
Although kind and deeply in love, their battle to keep the estate despite having no male heir occupied them for the whole series.
Just as desperate to bolster their position in society are Upstairs Downstairs’ Sir Hallam Holland, a diplomat played by playwright Tom Stoppard’s son Ed, and his wife Lady Agnes (Keeley Hawes), who, like Lady Cora, is disliked by her mother-in-law, Lady Maud. Sir Hallam struggles to keep the peace between the two women in his life.
The grand location
Downton Abbey and Upstairs Downstairs both use daily life inside a grand aristocratic house to detail the intricacies of the British class system at the beginning of the 20th Century — the Edwardian era for Downton and the period preceding the Second World War for Upstairs Downstairs.
Downton Abbey is a stately home set in the fictional village of Downton in Yorkshire, but was filmed at Highclere Castle in Hampshire. In Upstairs Downstairs, the centre of the action is a Georgian townhouse at 165 Eaton Place in London’s Belgravia.
Exterior shots for the original were filmed at 65 Eaton Place, with the ‘1’ painted on, but the new episodes were filmed in Clarendon Square in Leamington Spa.
The chauffer and the civil unrest
In Downton Abbey, it was Branson, the Irish chauffeur with socialist leanings, who encouraged Lady Sybil’s burgeoning interest in the political causes of the day, driving her to rallies.
Upstairs Downstairs’ chauffeur Harry Spargo, played by Neil Jackson, is similarly political, but his interest is in the far-Right movement of the Blackshirts.
Harry is seen at the centre of the ‘Battle of Cable Street’ riot on October 1936, which took place in London’s East End between anti-fascists and the Metropolitan Police, overseeing a march by Mosley’s Fascists.
Just as Lady Sybil joined Branson on an illicit day out, Lady ‘Persie’ is at the centre of the action with Spargo.
By Polly Dumbar for The Daily Mail.
(Source: dailymail.co.uk)