It’s September 1938 and a return to 165 Eaton Place in London’s Belgravia, home of Lord and Lady Holland (a very stiff upper lip pairing) and a bunch of servants, yes, them wot lives downstairs. Britain is on the brink of war and preparing for the worst.
Lady Agnes Holland has just had her baby and is recovering in what looks like a very posh maternity ward (no squeaky trollies or 6am pain-killer wake-ups for her!) Of course she looks very serene and prim (not that I’m bitter or anything), and not at all like someone who has just had a botched c-section. She decides there is far too much going on out there to stay in hospital, so discharges herself. On arriving home, her recently deceased mother-in-law’s half-sister (get all that?) Dr Blanche Mottershead (played by Alex ‘ER/Dr Who’ Kingston) comes rushing to her and says “My dear, you look absolutely frightful!” Charming welcome, well you can always count on your family to tell it like it is!
Lord Hallam Holland (say his name aloud and loads of times quite fast and it’s very funny) is meanwhile pacing around the programme looking like a very stressed chap. He’s something big and important to do with the Foreign Office and is part responsible (with Prime Minister Nevil Chamberlin) for preventing Mr Hitler from starting “an all out ideological war.” I don’t envy his job, as I imagine Hitler wasn’t the easiest guy to negotiate peace with. Lord Hallam comes across as a bit emotionally retarded and prim (which of course they were in those days) but I just want to loosen the top button on his starchy shirt and tell him to “chill Winston!” He frowns a lot as well with his uni-brow distracting me a bit too often. His hair is very smart though. When all is not going well with his negotiations he has a house meeting with his staff and family “from tonight this house prepares for war!” Stirring stuff.
I’ve spent too long deciphering them upstairs, so a bit about the folk below. Mr Pritchard the head butler is very camp and very bossy. It’s as if he thinks he is running Buckingham Palace. He looks like he is sucking a bumblebee most of the time and rolls his eyes a lot, a few decades later he would have been great alongside Mrs Slocombe and co in Are You Being Served. The servant cast isn’t as big or plentiful as Downton, but just enough so that the Hollands don’t ever have to lift a finger or open a door for themselves.
Mr Amanjit, a sikh, was formally the man-servant of the late matriarch Lady Holland, and is obviously lost at not having his late mistress around. On placing her ashes on the mantle piece, he is interrupted by the smoking Dr Blanche Mottershead who asks “Were you ever lovers?” I say old girl, that’s awful private and quite an introductory question seeing as the two of you have never met! He seems mighty cheesed off by this, and the rest of their scenes together consist of them trying to outstare each other. My money is on Alex Kingston given all her hospital and space monster fighting experience.
The cook is typically motherly and opinionated and she’s not best pleased when Dr Blanche (who is now getting up everyone’s nose) gives her a list of healthy hippy foods Lady Agnes should be eating post-birth. “Lady Agnes doesn’t need vitamins, she needs liver!” A new edition this series is Beryl, a young nursing assistant who is just earning enough money so she can one day train somewhere posh in London doing hair and nails (she already looks pretty enough to fit that role.) I think she will have a few more jobs to do other than boiling smelly nappies, including a bit of a romance with chauffer Sparso. Sparso (sounds like a Kirk Douglas film) is a bit of a looker and a ladies man (having recently had an illicit affair with Lady Percy – more about her later.) He reminds me of Hugo Speer in The Full Monty, he’s got quite a square jaw, though I bet he is good at driving the Holland’s to the shops and back.
As part of their war efforts, everyone in the house is fitted with gas masks. Lady Agnes asks what provision there are for newborns. Pritchard (ever the brown noser) brings out a black “gas proof pram” which looks like something from The Addams Family, and even has its own chimney. Creepy. John (the young footman, token good-but-not-very-bright-lad) decides to check how safe the pram is for a baby, and uses Solomon (the late Lady Holland’s creepy looking monkey) as his lab rat. He places the monkey in said pram inside the garage then turns the car engine on and floods the place with fumes. You can guess the outcome. “It’s heart has arrested John, get the brandy” shouts Pritchard as he tries to give the furry thing CPR (it’s like Animal Hospital, but without Rolf Harris interrupting.) No good though. Solomon the monkey gets killed off (quite glad, sorry monkey lovers everywhere) but he was only marginally less annoying then the inclusion of Ja Ja Binks in Star Wars: Episode 1 The Phantom Menace. The house is disturbed that night by the Police turning up to investigate the monkey’s death. A floppy jowled moustached Police Sergeant immediately suspects that the monkey has been gassed, judging by the colour of it’s gums which are pink like cherryade. Thus comes my favourite line of the episode “I’m not familiar with cherryade Sergeant!” says an irritated Lord Hallam rather sternly in his fetching silk dressing gown. I love the way he says the word cherryade like it’s some foreign object from a far away land.
Mr Amanjit is not in a great mood this episode what with the monkey karking it, Maude busy-bottom interfering and bossing him around and the revelation that Pritchard was a conscientious objector during the First World War. So, to let off a bit of steam he goes into the garden and starts crazily firing his pistol at some tin cans. Lady Agnes and Dr Blanche Busy-Bottom come running out to see what the commotion is, Blache sees that this nonsense is stopped in a very British tone of voice as she addresses the gawping servants “The spectacle has ended, and as we are in England I suggest you make some tea.” Yep, that’s right, put a brew on peasants.
They all make friends in the end and realise they have all been a bit silly. Lady Agnes does her bit in the absence of her husband to rally the troops and addresses them at their servants table with a rousing (and breathless) posh speech: “We all fit into this household in a different way, we come and go through different doors, we eat our meals at separate tables. But, we all give 165 Eaton Place as our address, and that means we are on the same side!” Hurrah lashing of ginger beer! Keeley (Ashes to Ashes) Hawes as Lady Agnes reminds me of something from Watch With Mother or Enid Blynton reading stories to little boys and girls. Intense RP and all so hoity toity and breathless whenever she speaks, it’s a shame, as she always ends up being the posh girl. She appears out of nowhere in quite a few of the shots and one of her lines makes me cringe: “Come upstairs and kiss the children Hallam. They are the future.” Ok love, it’s only a kiss on the forehead, no-need to ply anymore pressure on the guy whose trying to prevent the start of WW2. Anyway, that line sounds like something from a Micheal Jackson song.
Next thing we know, Hallam is over in Berlin doing man’s work, trying to sort this war thing out. His other more personal mission is to get his wife’s sister back from Berlin. Lady Percy (full name Lady Persephone Towyn, no wonder she shortened it) is a bit of a 1930s It Girl, she loves flirting, smoking, drinking expensive vodka (no Spar stuff for her) and flirting with lots of men (among other things.) She doesn’t seem to have a care in the world and shimmies around in her fitted red dress and bright red lipstick lips. Hallam spots her in an upmarket Berlin hotel doing all of the above (cue lots of fake laughter) and immediately disapproves. He walks her home and demands that she comes back to England with him, warning her of the danger she is in by remaining in Berlin. In a wooden manner (i.e. barely moving his face as he speaks) he says “You can leave with me tomorrow. I can take you home.” “No” she replies lunging towards him and giving him a long lingering kiss on the lips “But I may come and wave you off” (which she pronounces ‘orff’.) Hallam doesn’t exactly react the way you would hope your husband would react if your sister snogged him (I smell a future plotline.)
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