Just when you thought the tide of port, stiff white collars and Yes, Your Ladyships was dying down, along comes another wave.
Brideshead Revisited (...
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Downton Abbey, Julian Fellowes’s 1912 drama set in a thwacking great stately home, is entering its final stretch. So now prepare for the new version of Upstairs, Downstairs; out later this autumn, it’s set in 1936, six years after the original series ended.
Why do we love these toff dramas so much – and more particularly these early 20th-century toff dramas?
Well, class is the obvious number one answer. The outward signs of class may have become blurred in the last 70 years, since the days these dramas were set in, but we remain as obsessed as we ever were about differences in accent, background, school and university – just look at the acres of newsprint devoted to the backgrounds of the new coalition leaders.
Class differences in dress remain, although they are less distinctive than 70 years ago. Clothing obsessives can have a good old wallow in those more elegant days. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a minor boom in 1930s style when Ed Stoppard, Tom’s boy, appears as the young blood in tails in the new Upstairs, Downstairs.
October 14, 2010
