Class Act

The beloved master-servant drama Upstairs, Downstairs is back

By Mary Pols Sunday, Apr. 10, 2011
    • Courtesy PBS Masterpiece Theatre/BBC

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    A return to Upstairs, Downstairs was not without its challenges. When the series went off the air in Britain in 1975 (new episodes ran in the U.S. until 1977), there were attempts at spin-offs — Down says she declined one that would have featured Lady Georgina — but the general consensus was that it was time to lock the door at Eaton Place. The show had been comfort food to Britain in the messy early '70s, but with each loss of an essential, irreplaceable actor — Angela Baddeley, who played Mrs. Bridges, died in 1976 and Gordon Jackson (Hudson) in 1990 — it seemed less likely that it would be revisited. Marsh says she didn't take on the assignment of being the only bridge between the old and new series lightly. She didn't want to seem disloyal or be overwhelmed by sentiment. "The only time I felt really tragic and odd was when as Rose I stepped into the set of the house," Marsh says. "It was hard not to be Jean and Rose at the same time. And I had to have control because I shouldn't cry — the audience should cry."

    Back to Eaton Place

    If it weren't for Marsh, and the delight of seeing Atkins tromping around with a pet monkey and a cigarette holder, the new series would feel completely unnecessary. It's not blasphemy, and there's glitzy fun in there, but it is not nearly as tender and true as the original. If you are inclined to nostalgia, indulge yourself with Acorn Media's box set of Upstairs, Downstairs . It has every episode plus 25 hours of bonus material. I both craved and feared watching it; sometimes the further we get from old treasures, the less confidence we have in their merits. This 40th anniversary also brought on a mini—midlife crisis. You can stay deliberately vague about which college reunion is coming up, but when you realize your first appointment-television show outside ZOOM is four decades old, you wonder if you're even allowed to wear jeans anymore.

    To rewatch the earliest episodes of Upstairs, Downstairs is to realize how innocent your eyes once were to have accepted those wobbly '70s sets as the epitome of a fine mansion. (Marsh says that when filming began, no one was sure if the show would ever air, so the set was dismantled after each episode and tossed in a corner.) But I became addicted all over again to the characters, the dialogue — which might now be described as Sorkinesque — and story lines that still feel astonishingly bold. The first season alone broaches rape, homosexuality, infidelity, abortion and the suicide of a lovelorn kitchen maid. In a bizarre response to that last trauma, Mrs. Bridges steals a baby. Faced with the possibility of her arrest, the Bellamys go on the defensive. The whole thing was a terrible mistake by a decent woman — and "besides," says Lady Marjorie with affable arrogance, "I have a very important dinner party to give next week." No matter the level of affection — or even, on occasion, lust — the demarcation between the floors stays intact. Observing that order of things should perhaps have been anathema in the freewheeling '70s, but it wasn't; four confusing and often frightening decades later, it still has strange powers of seduction.

    This article originally appeared in the April 4, 2011 issue of TIME.

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