Edwardians on Screen

From Downton Abbey to Parade’s End

verfasst von: Katherine Byrne

Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan UK

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" , Springer Professional "Technik"

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Über dieses Buch

This book explores television's current fascination with the Edwardian era. By exploring popular period dramas such as Downton Abbey , it examines how the early twentieth century is represented on our screens, and what these shows tell us about class, gender and politics, both past and present.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Introduction: Neo-Edwardian Television, and “Heritage” Today

Abstract

This book will explore one of the most popular and influential trends in contemporary television: the representation on screen of the early years of the twentieth century, leading up to and including the First World War. From mainstream period soap operas like Downton Abbey, to more “academic,” critically acclaimed productions like Tom Stoppard’s recent BBC adaptation of Parade’s End, the small screen has revealed an ongoing preoccupation with the period over the last 15 years. If we can judge the established nature of a genre by the existence of its satire, then the BBC suffragette comedy Up The Women (2013–), currently on its second series, is one indicator of how recognisable the Edwardian period has become¹. This monograph sets out, then, to examine why the Edwardians should have become so popular with today’s television audiences — who have of course been avid consumers of all period drama, but seem to have a particular fascination with this era — and what kind of resonance the first years of the twentieth century have for the first years of our own. It will also explore what these programmes can tell us about the state of what I term in this book as “post-post heritage” drama today, and what they reveal about contemporary attitudes toward class and gender, and the ways our television reflects and constructs both.

Katherine Byrne

1. The Edwardians in Popular Memory

Abstract

In Downton Abbey’s Christmas special for 2014, the Dowager Countess, Violet, is reliving her past to Isobel Crawley and, for once departing from her usual very proper persona, is remembering the passionate affair she had with a Russian prince as a younger woman:

“At the royal wedding we fell madly in love. And after weeks of balls and midnight skating to the stains of the balalaika … we resolved to elope … to set sail on the Prince’s yacht…” [Isobel] “And you’ve never strayed again?” [Violet] “I’ve never risked everything again.” [Isobel] “That’s not quite what I asked.” [Violet] “And it’s all the answer you’ll get. Remember, we were the Edwardians.” (Downton, Christmas 2014, emphasis Violet’s)

No more details are given, but as Violet smiles suggestively and smugly, the implication of her enigmatic response is clear. Her generation may have looked like the respectable, buttoned up successors to the Victorians, and were always discreet about their wrongdoings, but they knew how to have a good time. The upper-class life Violet describes here is one where intrigue and adultery are set against a backdrop of luxury and parties. There are strict social rules, but there is also indulgence and the beginnings of modern sensibilities about sexuality. This seems to sum up our contemporary view of the Edwardian period: as a transitional time when Victorian repression was beginning to give way to modern permissiveness, and where life was very pleasant — if only for a select few, like the characters in Downton. But those few are those whose lives we know most about, and who we choose to remember.

Katherine Byrne

2. An Adaptation of an Adaptation: The Forsyte Saga (2002)

Abstract

At first appearance the most “classic” of the period dramas under consideration here, Granada television’s 2002 adaptation of The Forsyte Saga is an obvious starting point for the consideration of the Edwardian age on the small screen over the last decade. Previously a huge popular success when it aired in the late 1960s, its reincarnation in 2002 (and its second series in 2003) can be considered appropriate for the beginning of a new century, given that its key subject matter is the transition from one era to the next. Indeed, given that it was being filmed at the time of the attacks on the World Trade Centre, it can be read as a period drama for a post 9/11 age. Chapters 3 and 4 of this project will argue that the stately home and the department store act as states in microcosm, and I suggest here that the Forsyte family seems to function as a “family politic” in a similar way. Its claustrophobic insularity — the series is entirely focused on the Forsytes’ clan and those that marry into it, and almost all its scenes are set within their houses — can be considered reflective of the isolationist, inward looking world view that characterised many of the foreign policies of the Western powers in the first years of the twenty-first century.

Katherine Byrne

3. Class and Conservatism in Downton Abbey (2010–)

Abstract

ITV’s BAFTA and Golden Globe winning Downton Abbey was, and is still, the television success story of recent years. First shown in 2010 and now on its sixth series, it has been declared the most successful British period drama since 1981’s Brideshead Revisited, with average viewing figures of around 9 million per episode, and it has also been extremely popular in America.¹ Its success may partly arise from the fact that it represents a departure from most period productions, being not an adaptation of a classic novel but a made-for-TV drama created by the writer of film re-imaginings of the past like Gosford Park and The Young Victoria, Julian Fellowes. Thus it does not face the challenges of rendering a literary text accessible for a contemporary audience but instead is made with that audience in mind. As such it combines period drama with elements of the soap opera — a large cast of characters, numerous subplots and parallel storylines — and, like Gosford Park and in the tradition of (recently remade) Upstairs Downstairs, follows the lives of both servants and employers in the eponymous house.

Katherine Byrne

4. From Downton to the Department Store: Sex, Shopping and Heritage in Mr Selfridge (2013–)

Abstract

Mr Selfridge appears, superficially at least, to share the same Upstairs Downstairs concept and format as Downton Abbey, and can be regarded as another attempt on the part of ITV and Masterpiece to combine soap opera and heritage drama, with a view to recreating Downton’s success. It cannot be said that it has quite achieved this, but it has been very well received, with average ratings between 5 and 8 million per episode in Britain, and is currently enjoying a successful run in the United States. Moreover, Mr Selfridge has beaten BBC’s rival shopping show, The Paradise, which was dropped after two series: Davies’s show has been commissioned for four. The show represents a reboot or evolution of the period drama, given that it exchanges the rural stately home in which Downton — among many other costume serials — is set, for the famous London department store. The Paradise shares a similar format, although as it is set earlier, in the late Victorian period, it is outside the scope of this book. There are a number of similarities between the two shows, however, which makes a comparison useful, as Andrea Wright has explored (2015: 224–235).

Katherine Byrne

5. A Return to “quality”: Parade’s End (2012)

Abstract

Susanna White’s 2012 Parade’s End is undeniably the most “highbrow” period drama examined in this book. The soap-like elements of the popular Sunday-night television programmes I have discussed thus far are notably absent here, in Tom Stoppard’s “unashamedly literary” 2012 adaptation of Ford Madox Ford’s tetralogy (Dowell, 2012). Constantly favourably compared to Downton Abbey, this five-part mini-series has been embraced by critics, who found it “deeper and more truthful” than Fellowes’s show (Simpson, 2012): a kind of thoughtful, perceptive “Downton for grown-ups” (Thompson, 2012).¹ Indeed, Parade’s End was considered a reaction against, and rejection of, the “dumbing down” of the historical serial by Fellowes and the texts which followed in Downton’s wake. With its high production values, a starry cast, a passionate love triangle and a complex and brilliant canonical source text (or in this case texts) this had all the ingredients of a classic “event in television history” (Thompson, 2012). Its reception with the viewing public, however, did not quite measure up to expectations: its ratings (although high for BBC2) were modest from the outset and plummeted further after the first episode aired. If this is how we measure success, this is the least successful Edwardian drama I explore here, and the one which reached the smallest audience.²

Katherine Byrne

6. “An ordinary epic”: The Village (2013–)

Abstract

The subject of this final chapter, BBC1’s most recent Edwardian drama, The Village (2013–), is the antithesis of the other historical fictions examined in this book. Set in the period immediately prior to and following the First World War, it covers ground which is by now pretty familiar to us, but sees it through very different eyes. Peter Moffat wrote the series with the intention of making it an “ordinary epic, a narrative that is determined to be interested in life as it is lived” which examines the world as it was for the inhabitants of a fictional village in the Peak District (Cooke, 2013). This show sets out to challenge and subvert the version of history offered by shows like Downton, by focusing almost entirely on the working class and attempting to represent their lives with accuracy. The televisual tradition established by Upstairs Downstairs and continued by Downton established that, where the lower classes are represented on screen, the focus is of the show is — more or less — equally divided, between them and their upper class employers. This seems to assume that while the viewer may be interested in servants, they expect equal screen time to be given to their more glamorous social “superiors”.

Katherine Byrne

Conclusion

Abstract

On the 1st January 1901, one of The Times’s leading articles greeted the arrival of a new century:

The twentieth century has dawned upon us, and as we float past this quiet landmark on the shores of time feelings of awe and wonder naturally creep over us … To Englishmen, Scotsmen and Irishmen, the first of all considerations must be — How will the new century affect the moral and material greatness of their country and their Empire? … We enter upon the new century with a heritage of achievement and of glory older, more continuous, and not less splendid than any country in the world. Our national character, as the ordeal of this last year has abundantly shown, has lost nothing of its virility and doggedness when put to the proof of War … We have a reasonable trust that England and her sons will … live and prosper, one United and Imperial people, to be “a bulwark for the cause of men.” (Read, 1973: 10)

This love letter to Englishness at the dawn of a new era sums up much of what we still associate with the Edwardians today: jingoism, faith in Imperialism, belief in British values and democracy, and optimism about the future. Above all, perhaps, is a sense of a great legacy of progress and prosperity, which originated with the Victorians and now is to be passed down to the generation that follows.

Katherine Byrne

Backmatter

Titel: Edwardians on Screen
verfasst von: Katherine Byrne
Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan UK
Electronic ISBN: 978-1-137-46789-8
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-55938-1
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137467898