Cream teas at 30,000ft, stealing Madonna’s limo — and Keeley’s bathtime heroics… The secrets of bringing Upstairs Downstairs back for Christmas
In two weeks’ time, I will get the Christmas present of a lifetime. Upstairs Downstairs — one of the best-loved television programmes in history — is coming back.
I’m so excited, I keep forgetting that I’ve written it myself. The revived Upstairs Downstairs begins with an empty house — 165 Eaton Place, former home of the Bellamys, has not been lived in for five years.
As Lady Agnes Holland, the new chatelaine, remarks: ‘What a ghastly old mausoleum!’ She gets the decorators in immediately. Over the course of the three-hour drama, a dozen new characters converge upon the house, and it becomes home to two distinct families.
Upstairs, meet the Hollands — wealthy and impeccably connected. Downstairs, meet their staff — a motley crew thrown together by circumstance. Housekeeper Rose Buck (played by Jean Marsh) bridges the gap between masters and servants. Once a housemaid to the Bellamys, she also links the present and the past.
I sensed from the start, long before our broadcast dates were settled, that I wanted the story to conclude at Christmas. The end of any drama is about completeness, closing the circle, bringing everybody home.
As Euros Lyn, our lead director, once observed: ‘This is a house full of orphans.’ One way or another, they all arrive in pieces and 165 Eaton Place makes them whole.
However, just as in the original ITV series, the magic of the new show lies in the way public events affect the lives of private people. The latest chapter in the saga spans January to December 1936 — the momentous Year of Three Kings — ending with the Abdication Crisis and accession of George VI. With such a wealth of action, I doubted there was room for festive razzmatazz.
Then I saw the set. I had had high hopes for it since inspecting designer Eve Stewart’s three-dimensional model earlier in the year. I knew that her intention, like mine, was to love and honour the original, without necessarily obeying its restrictions.
Like me, she didn’t want to plunder its past glories, but to burnish and nurture them, making Upstairs Downstairs beautiful again.
What I didn’t expect, when I arrived at the studio, was to walk through a real door into the real hall of a real house. For a moment, I couldn’t move, or speak.
This was 165 Eaton Place. Here was the green baize door, leading to the servants’ quarters. Here was the staircase, flanked by lamps and pillars. Here was the black-and-white tiled floor, the door through to the morning room.
But the stairs didn’t come to a sudden dead end, the way they had in the Seventies. Carpeted in sumptuous blue, they carried on rising to a balconied mezzanine, overlooking the palatial space below. And there was only one thing missing. I turned to Nikki Wilson, our producer.
‘We need a Christmas tree. Here.’ I pointed to the middle of the floor. Christmas trees cost money — especially in August — but Nikki didn’t flinch. So I added: ‘And it must be 25ft high.’
It was, in the end. With a star on top, the thing that I like best.
When we filmed the final scenes, watching the Hollands and their servants gather round the tree gave me a moment of the purest pleasure. Most of the time, a television programme is just a television programme.
Once in a while, it becomes a touchstone, a totem, a thing that connects us to a different time. I was a child when I first fell in love with Eaton Place. Huddled on the set, out of the camera’s range, I was a child no longer, but I wept.
My journey back through the decades began on a broken-down train. I was supposed to be meeting Piers Wenger, head of drama at BBC Wales, and called him to say I’d be late.
Suddenly, I heard myself saying: ‘And by the way, I think we should bring back Upstairs Downstairs.’ To this day I don’t know where the idea came from. There was a silence — and then he said: ‘Heidi. I suspect we are going to remember this conversation for a very long time.’
We rolled up our sleeves and set to work in early 2008. As it happened, Cranford, my adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel, was due to be launched in America. I was to travel to Los Angeles with its star, Dame Eileen Atkins.
Along with her lifelong friend Jean Marsh, she had created the original Upstairs Downstairs series. Jean had gone on to play the role of Rose Buck, winning an Emmy, while Eileen had declined the part of Sarah (played by Pauline Collins) in favour of playing major roles in Shakespeare.
Eileen was due to travel first-class, a privilege offered only to senior on-screen talent. I was doomed to sweat out the flight in economy. At the last minute, our American hosts telephoned, saying that ‘as Dame Eileen does not enjoy air travel’ would I object to sitting with her on the aeroplane?
And so it came to pass that, over a miniature cream tea served at 30,000ft, I first broached the subject of reviving ‘Updown’. There were no witnesses — the only other passenger was Kelly Osbourne, who was fast asleep.
When we returned from Los Angeles, Eileen enlisted the support of Jean. As huge admirers of the BBC, both were keen on our approach. They had had many offers regarding remakes, revivals and spin-offs across the years, including several from ITV, and said no to almost all of them.
Nevertheless, at this point plans were afoot to make ‘Updown’ into a feature film. Piers and I agreed to put our dreams on hold.
But the film began to flounder, and another cream tea was organised. We arranged to meet Jean, Eileen and original producer John Witney at a London hotel. John shared in the rights, and his support was crucial.
Everything was still top-secret. Arriving early, Piers secured a discreet table in a corner, surrounded by high, winged chairs. I ran into the Ladies to gift-wrap, in triplicate, a large collection of DVDs.
My shows Madame Bovary, Cranford and Ballet Shoes (all of which had starred Eileen) were joined by my 1920 drama series Lilies, and Piers’s Bafta-winning production of Housewife, 49. I had impulsively bought them on the way to the hotel, hoping they might underpin our bid.
When I came out of the lavatory, Piers was pacing up and down outside, waiting to inspect my handiwork. ‘Are the ribbons a bit much?’ I asked, indicating the hasty bows of grosgrain. ‘Absolutely not,’ said Piers. I suspect he would have liked them slightly bigger.
As soon as discussions started, we hit a bad bump in the road. John, who is quite charming, stopped, examined the sandwiches and said: ‘Oh. No cucumber. And I was so hoping there might be.’ I was out of my seat in a flash. I hunted down the maitre d’ and grabbed his sleeve. ‘I absolutely have to have a large plate of cucumber sandwiches.
At the table in the corner. Now.’ I must have looked very mad and wild because they were on the table in less than four minutes. Three hours later, the most iconic brand in TV history was ours — ‘subject to contract’.
The legalities proved labyrinthine, and there were many more cream teas. Sometimes it was just Piers and me, miserably stuffing our faces with scones. Doing the deal was like trying to plait soot. At one point the whole thing seemed to hinge on a single piece of paper that nobody had seen since 1973.
We kept everything firmly under wraps. But the television business thrives on gossip, and I was aware of people circling, trying to find out more. I refused to be drawn, as much out of fear of jinxing it as anything.
About two months after we finally secured the rights, we were surprised when ITV announced they were ‘rebooting Upstairs Downstairs‘.
The masters-and-servants themed series was to be called Downton Abbey and set in a country house just before the First World War. It was a shot across our bows.
There is, however, a world of difference between a country house and the sophisticated, urban world of 165 Eaton Place, and our drama was set 25 years later. I was sure there was room for both programmes, and as both practitioner and fan of period TV, was pleased to see the genre getting more airtime.
Setting to work on the scripts, I strove for a balance between the old and new. Like every admirer of the show, I have vivid memories of the Bellamys and their staff, and had to proceed with tenderness and caution.
Mr Hudson, the butler — played by Gordon Jackson in the original — cast the longest shadow, and I acknowledged his ghost. He feels almost present in the house, and Rose has a hard time choosing his replacement.
Upstairs, I put a younger couple — Sir Hallam (Ed Stoppard) and Lady Agnes Holland (Keeley Hawes) — at the helm. Ed is possibly the most handsome man in England and Sir Hallam’s job at the Foreign Office brings the gathering storm in Europe centre-stage.
He is a baronet, and vibrant Lady Agnes is the daughter of an earl: as players in London high society, they needed unlimited cash. I gave them a vast disposable fortune, based on the sale of asbestos mines in India. The house drips with money — so much so that when Jean Marsh first saw the upstairs she was shocked. She lowered her voice, as though Lady Agnes might overhear her: ‘I think it’s a bit…nouveaux riches.’
The road to production was paved with little triumphs. We secured the rights to the original, iconic theme. We whisked a glorious Humber limousine from under Madonna’s nose — she’d been after it for a film she was making.
We were downcast when we realised that horrendous traffic and parking issues meant we couldn’t film outside the original house in Belgravia, London — then had yet another stroke of luck. Euros, our director, discovered that Victorian architect P.F Robinson had built an identical terrace in Leamington Spa. We filmed all our street scenes there. It was a perfect match.
There is deep comfort in the past.
But for every glorious moment on screen, there are hours and days and weeks of slog behind the scenes. I was reminded of this one day when we were filming in the bathroom, a Deco hall of mirrors that looks like a Gracelands en suite.
The pink marble tub can seat two in comfort. But there was a problem with the taps. Special effects had to fill it using a garden hose, which dribbled out water at the rate of about an inch an hour.
Keeley waited patiently, her hair wrapped in a green gauze turban. As her character is preparing for a party, her face was plastered with a matching masque. ‘Pistachio,’ she said. ‘I tried it at home.’
Time was running out as we approached the end of the filming day. The crew formed a human chain, passing buckets from hand to hand. Keeley climbed into 4in of water, her flesh-coloured bodystocking all too visible. An art assistant waited, poised with a jar of handmade bath salts. ‘We mixed them specially,’ she said. ‘We couldn’t find any with rose petals in.’
In the end, we brought the water level up by chucking in a load of iron doorstops, and Keeley was handed the finishing touch: a pale pink, gold-tipped Sobranie cigarette. She played the scene to perfection in a single take.
Attention to detail was relentless. The Hollands entertain a great deal — and I drew up the menus myself, in French. Home economist Lisa Heathcote built blancmanges so elaborate they needed their own postcode. Make-up designer Christine Allsop filled tiny vellum notebooks with little dots of lipstick and nail polish — a separate palette for each of the female characters, ranging from peach through to darkest plum.
Christine captured the spirit of the show. Period detail was referenced at every turn but she avoided anything that jarred or felt oppressive. One or two fashions were ugly enough to be distracting. Eyebrow-wise, the high, plucked arch of the Thirties had to be softened, and we avoided the rigid, corrugated perm. Wigs were hand-woven from natural human hair.
The approach to male grooming was altogether simpler. It was a short back and sides. Christine enlisted my support for this before a single character was cast, as many actors are resistant to short hair.
The whole production team agreed: the Thirties’ crop was non-negotiable, and we would not relent even if the actor had to be anaesthetised. In the event, even the 200 extras we used in the Cable Street riots were compliant, although I did hear one mutter: ‘What next? Sheep dip?’
While the drama is paramount in Upstairs Downstairs, exquisite style is also part of the allure. We were fortunate to secure the services of Bafta-winning costume designer Amy Roberts.
Amy’s sketches took my breath away. No corsets here, and no bonnets either. The joy of Thirties fashions is that they are clothes we might covet today: slinky evening dresses, chiffon blouses, black lace sleeves. We can put them on mentally, imagine them our own.
Some costumes were rooted firmly in reality. Anne Reid, who plays Mrs Thackeray the cook, asked Amy to base her look on photographs of her own mother, actually taken in 1936. In contrast, Lady Agnes’s wardrobe is the stuff of fantasy.
One of her frocks, a vintage gown entirely covered in gold sequins, weighed several pounds, and rattled like a bag of money. Even her ladyship’s nightwear is to die for. ‘Another day, another peignoir!’ trilled Keeley, arriving in the bedroom swathed in ivory satin with maribou cuffs.
One way and another, feathers feature a great deal in Upstairs Downstairs. Look out, in Episode Two, for wayward Lady Persie’s apricot ostrich bolero and the jay’swing fascinator she wears.
And all over 165, you can have fun spotting little bird motifs in paintings and on china, in the peach and gold paper on the bedroom walls. It was one of the endless devoted touches from the art department, whose genius had transformed three cavernous, empty studios in Cardiff into a living, breathing home.
The same team were also responsible for hatching and nurturing a whole squad of baby sparrows. A fledgling is featured in Episode One.
Nico Mirallegro, who plays junior footman Johnny Proude, was wideeyed: ‘I held it in my hand and I felt its heart beating. They said: “Hold it tight so it doesn’t fly away. But not too tight, or it might die.” ‘
I felt much the same about Upstairs Downstairs. Every day, along with Piers, I felt the pressure of Jean and Eileen’s faith. They had not only entrusted us with the format, but promised to appear in the new show. Without Jean, we could not have made the sequel. Jean is Rose, and Rose is Upstairs Downstairs.
There was, however, a delicate matter to address. Dramatically, the story of the Bellamys concluded in 1930 — we pick up the story six years later. In real life, it has been 35 years. Jean has worn exceptionally well, but we feared she might be accused of accelerated ageing.
The problem lay with the original programme. Although the five series had spanned three story decades, it was not considered necessary to age the characters.
Jean worked out that Rose had been a little over 30 when the story began in 1903, and therefore over 60 by the end, but she was never given a strand of grey hair, or a single wrinkle.
The logic was entirely on our side. Rose would, by now, be around 66. Not as sprightly as she once was, but determined to work until she drops. Rose is a fascinating woman: a loyal, perfectionist, sometimes vinegary spinster who feels things deeply and never gives up. Both Jean and I relished the idea of catching up with Rose in old age.
Eileen’s character, Maud, Sir Hallam’s mother, was a different prospect altogether — a wonderful chance to try something new. It is easy to write a battle-axe, and Eileen could play one standing on her head. But we wanted to create something subtler and more complex; a multilayered, intriguing woman who has hopes, secrets and regrets.
I gave Maud a background in India. As the widow of an eminent civil servant, she is one of the women who helped sustain the Raj. Eileen suggested giving her some intellectual heft, and we added scenes where Maud reclines in gold pyjamas, dictating her memoirs to secretary Art Malik.
Eileen also suggested a monkey on a lead. This was later amended to a monkey off a lead, on the grounds that freethinking Maud would never constrain an animal. I did venture a scene in which Maud groomed the monkey with an ivory brush, but at its audition the monkey made its scepticism clear, and threw the brush at Euros several times.
We are blessed with an extraordinary cast. Without exception, we got our first choice of actor for every single part. But because of their unique association with the show, it was Jean and Eileen whom I loved and love the most.
They came up with the original idea while sitting at a kitchen table. I like to write at the kitchen table too. There is, however, a deeper bond between us. A hundred years ago, all three of us would have been servants, following in the footsteps of our forebears.
Eileen’s father was an under-chauffeur, Jean’s mother a ladies’ maid. My father’s mother and her sisters were all in service as young girls. This was not because they were not bright or ambitious or talented or brave. It was because they were working-class — no other door was open to them.
I, like Jean and Eileen, have had other opportunities. Socially, Britain is more mobile than it was. But it remains enthralled by class, and its own past — and its taste in television proves this.
The Upstairs Downstairs team were thrilled by the success of Downton Abbey. The two shows are very different, but here was proof of real appetite for high-class period drama — just the sort of thing we’d worked so hard to make. We don’t see Downton as a rival, but a companion in arms.
There is a tendency these days to look down on ‘costume drama’, and questions are asked about its relevance. But my feeling is that so much contemporary TV is focused on serial killers, maverick detectives and gangsters with a grudge that we struggle to see ourselves reflected on the screen.
It is a veritable roll call of the damned, and yet we are told that this is real, this is relevant, this is about being British today.
Faced with such an unpalatable picture, it is not surprising that we seek to sink into the past. There is deep comfort to be found in the frocks and the flowers and the shining hair. In shows such as Upstairs Downstairs there are also deeper truths about humanity.
Stories about rules and why we break them, about suffering and belonging. About love, and what it does to you. We connect with the past because we can reach out and touch it; we look into its eyes and see our faces shining back.
Perhaps, like Christmas itself, costume dramas connect us to our deeper, better nature. Perhaps they simply make us happy for a while.
I have finished my long walk hand-in-hand with Upstairs Downstairs. We have given it our best, it warranted nothing less.
I will turn away from work now, and towards my family: the one constant touchstone in my life. Like everyone else, we have Yuletide traditions. Yes, we watch television — always the BBC. We also serve pavlova, alongside the Christmas pud.
Making this is my job, and I give it all I’ve got. The best meringue, the best filling, the best sparklers on the top. I prepare the base at home, cradling it on my knee all the way to my brother’s farm in Leicestershire.
There, I whip the cream and put it all together. We aren’t the sort of family that says: ‘I love you.’ But we do like our pavlova, and when I dish it up, I think they get the message.
It’s a bit like Upstairs Downstairs. It says important things. It’s made with devotion. Carried with care. And coming soon, at Christmas.
Upstairs Downstairs will be screened on BBC1 at 9pm on December 26, 27 and 28.
By Heidi Thomas for The Daily Mail.
(Source: The Daily Mail)