I never watched this series when it was originally broadcast, in the seventies. I started college in the fall of 1970, and didn't watch television for many years after that - which seems a little strange, since I watched lots of TV throughout childhood and adolescence. I'm not a TV snob, either - I admit to liking lots of shows. But it wasn't convenient to watch in college, and then somehow we never bought a television until several years into our married life - I think we got our first one, a little black and white thing, in 1977. So for a good part of a decade I was out of the TV loop.
Anyway, that is all background for why I had never seen this famous series until recently. I have to say that I am enjoying it immensely, not least because I strongly identify with the Downstairs crowd. My mother was a cook and my father a gardener for wealthy people in Lake Forest, Illinois for many years before I was born. They were known as a "hired couple." They were dairy farmers in Michigan when I was born, but a year later my father was working in a factory in Illinois, and my mother was very soon after that taking in laundry. She worked as a cleaning woman for various families most of my life, and so did I. And sometimes we both worked private parties, serving food and drinks to the guests much the way Rose and Hudson carry the trays around the rooms in the series.
We had friends who were the housekeeper and caretaker at the Adlai Stevenson estate, and I can tell you that the gossip of servants in the series is much like the gossip of the servants on that estate.
Anyway -- enjoying the series, with all its melodrama, immensely.
My parent would watch Upstairs Downstairs, and the opening music was very enticing as I heard up come up the stairs to my bedroom. I eventually got to watch a few episodes and always hoped I could see more.
ReplyDeleteI bet someone could write a book about enticing, forbidden television shows and little kids. My memory is that for a while my brother and I slept in beds at one end of the living room, with large dressers in front of our beds to shield us from the television. We would always try to peek around the corners of the dressers and watch TV after we were supposed to be asleep.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason I found the opening credits of the Jackie Gleason show (the man in the moon picture) wonderfully evocative. It seemed to promise the most wonderful, magical show ever. I was quite surprised and disappointed when I actually saw an episode.