In fact it was made by Granada, a long-lost (and much lamented) part of the ITV network.
An intriguing costume drama battle has recently broken out between those old adversaries, with ITV's Downton Abbey (above) wowwing the critics and audiences a couple of months back, and the BBC's just-broadcast made-over revivification of long-running 1970s soap Upstairs Downstairs (below) also being reasonably well received.
For my money, ITV has won this contest. Downton had a larger cast of characters, something that conveyed well the "small town" feel of a large English country house, whereas Upstairs with its more restricted town-house setting and smaller cast felt more claustrophobic.
Both series featured radicalised and handsome chauffeurs -- Downton with an Irish socialist (played by Alan Leech, above, looking devastatingly handsome in that uniform); Upstairs, intriguingly, with a Mosleyite Fascist (below):
British flirtations with fascism rarely appear in popular culture, so it's always a bit startling to see British Union of Fascist logos displayed, Nazi-style, on public buildings.
But we know there were large numbers of people who engaged with this evil, which was vigorously supported, of course, by that liberal and reasonable newspaper the Daily Mail.
My God, those Fascists were good at graphic design.
Downton had rather more running time to play with than Upstairs, but even so its storylines were rather more gripping. Upstairs also threw away one of its biggest cards -- the appearance of utterly gorgeous actor Nico Mirallegro.
He featured heavily in episode 1, easily the most, er, interesting character, but was written out of the plot before the hour was up (yes, yes, I know he came back for about a minute towards the end of the final episode, but there were certainly no more delicious topless shots like this one):
What intriguing little nipples he has...
Actually Downton did something similar, featuring a queer aristocratic played by Charlie Cox.
Alas, after giving us an all-too-brief glimpse of good chest hair, he summarily disappeared never really to re-appear (alright, he did, but it was very brief. And with no chest hair). Here's a reminder of what Charlie Cox's chest hair looks like:
Um... where was I?
Yes, Downton also won on the prestigious casting stakes, Upstairs' heavyweight Eileen Atkins easily being outgunned by Downton's double-barrelled Maggie Smith and Penelope Wilton.
Although, in all fairness, Upstairs tried to play another trump card with the inclusion in its cast of the delightful Blake Ritson (spoiling it by making his appearances far too brief):
You must remember Blake? He was the schoolboy object of obsession of the incredibly creepy paedophile German schoolmaster in extraordinarily dark comedy series The League of Gentlemen...? No...? Well, here Blake is playing the Duke of Kent, which I guess is an increase in social status if nothing else.
That reminds me: I don't think I've spent enough time telling you about Nico Mirallegro yet.
Here he is in some other programme.
No idea what, but it seemed to involve him taking all his clothes off.
Except that when he had a bath, mysteriously, he kept his pants on. Which, I think we can all agree, is a crying shame.
Back to the original point (yes, there was one). Downton and Upstairs are both enjoyably soapy romps, but neither of them has the bottom of Brideshead. I suspect that's because neither of them are fortunate enough to have such a heavyweight anchor as this novel:
Although, having written all that, I have not (yet) reviewed 2008's film of Brideshead, so I suppose I ought to withhold further judgement until then. Still, at least that will give me another chance to post lots of images of Nico Mirallegro. Er...
PS: Bugger it. Forgot to include these:
It is, of course, Nico Mirallegro, giving good, er, Nico.
I can't imagine what made me forget them: must have been trying to keep them back for my exclusive pleasure, or some such. Sorry.
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