Really obsessed with the original Upstairs Downstairs now, am well in Season Two and they have 13 episodes each, and it's a very interesting experience.
For one thing if they make a mistake, knock over a prop, etc., they keep going. That's fascinating. There's been banging and crashing as if they were real people doing real things, especially in the kitchen scenes. It has the strangest effect on the viewer, the mistakes tend to make you feel as if it's really happening. Hard to explain. We don't see it much now in our modern films. You'd think it would interfere with the suspension of disbelief, but it doesn't.
Meanwhile the drama really keeps going, testing the smooth false exterior both Upstairs and Downstairs desperately want to maintain as show. Really riveting, and I can't figure out yet which "class" is intended to be the better, it's not that obvious yet. Just about anybody would be crushed by what's happening to the Upstairs, but not everybody has the Family Solicitor (Fix It Man) who has a solution for everything.....he alone is...I hate to keep using the word.... fascinating. He's clear his loyalty is to Lady Marjorie's father, the Earl....it's something else. The message I'm getting is pretty severely critical of the Upstairs false front but the Downstairs has one, too, and it's likewise false, but is heartbreaking, actually, to watch. I'm trying to figure out why.
That's what I'm getting out of it so far, but I wonder if it's actually a statement about all of us.
Super experience.
