Upstairs, Downstairs
Documentaries

26th December 1975 (LWT for ITV)
Russell Harty goes.... Upstairs, Downstairs

Written and Produced by Nicholas Barrett
Directed by Mike Mansfield
Presented by Russell Harty
With: Gordon Jackson, Jean Marsh, David Langton, Joan Benham, Lesley-Anne Down, Raymond Huntley, Simon Williams, Angela Baddeley, Christopher Beeny, Jacqueline Tong, Gareth Hunt and Jenny Tomasin
Running time: 30 mins. (inc. commercials)

This special edition of Russell Harty's LWT chat show celebrated the Upstairs, Downstairs series after the transmission of the final episode a few days previously. Harty is Harty, as only he could be, but was never a person whose talent I could appreciate. But, being LWT's resident talk-show host of the time, plus a fan of UpDown, plus a personal friend of Jean Marsh, meant that he was always the obvious choice when LWT decided to do anything UD related.

The programme is a strange, staccato affair as the po-faced Harty fires off facile questions whilst looking decidedly uncomfortable amidst the established camaraderie of the cast. His queries are addressed sometimes to the actors, sometimes to the characters, seemingly at random. Only Simon Williams treats this approach with the contempt it deserves, as he sits back and gently mocks the whole affair. There is also a (scripted) toe-curling running gag where the cast constantly get Harty's name wrong, and he is variously referred to as "Mr Hardly", "Hartai", "Hartly", "Hadleigh", "Hardlow" and "Heartburn". Quite.

The first half (before the advert break) is held in the morning room with the "upstairs" cast, all of whom are clearly embarrassed by this experience. There's a pretty obvious edit at one point which seems to have been where Lesley-Anne Down's contribution should have been. Presumably the constraints of running time meant someone had to go...

The show moves downstairs to the servants' hall for the longer second half, and the remaining stars of the show get much the same treatment. Jackson and Baddeley, being the old pros that they were, manage the best here, as they affirm their delight on working with each other. Gareth Hunt comes off worst as Harty charges blindly forward and presses him on his theatrical family background which he is obviously reluctant to promote.

As a record of the cast as they were (exactly half of those appearing are now dead, including Harty), this programme is an interesting experience (to hear Jackie Tong's real-life posh accent – since discarded – if nothing else!) but it could have been far better with a different presenter and a longer running time. Jean Marsh has said she found the whole experience uncomfortable and would not repeat it.

For pictures from this documentary, please see my Russell Harty goes.... Upstairs, Downstairs Picture Album.

1st May 1977 (WGBH Boston for PBS)
Upstairs, Downstairs Farewell – A Million Dollar Party
(aka The Boston Tea Party)

Content Producer: Joan Sullivan
Pledge Producer: Dighton Spooner
Director: Russ Fortier
Executive Producer: John Kerr
Presented by Alistair Cooke, Larry Grossman, David Ives and John Kerr
With: Jean Marsh, Simon Williams, Jacqueline Tong, Christopher Beeny, Rachel Gurney, Hannah Gordon, Bill Bain, Meg Wynn Owen, Gareth Hunt, Joan Benham, Anthony Andrews, and on film from London: Raymond Huntley, John Hawkesworth, Jenny Tomasin and (briefly) Nicola Pagett
Running time: 120 mins. (inc. commercials)

In 1977 PBS decided to combine their annual pledge drive with a special live programme to celebrate their showing of the last ever UpDown episode. The programme alternates interviews with the cast and crew of UpDown (on a mock-up of the morning-room set) with appeals for money from the public. The appeal parts of the show, to support the PBS network, are presented from a telethon-style bank of phones – the target being $1million by the end of the evening. Although the programme's heart is in the right place, sadly the end result is a shambolic mess.

The crew appear to be either untrained or drunk and the production is littered with unplanned pauses, lost camera shots and missed cues. It doesn't help that, aside from Alistair Cooke, the other presenters are executive bigwigs from PBS or WGBH instead of front-of-camera TV professionals who might have had more success in holding the show together during the frequent hiccups. In fact, in this respect, the UpDown guests themselves often save the day, with Simon Williams and Chris Beeny in particular stepping in with impromptu comments and ad-libs to help paper over the bouts of "dead time".

Even Cooke himself seems to find the whole exercise something of a trial. His "interviews" are brief and inconsequential and he often interrupts his guests with his next question before they have finished answering the one before. The hubbub of the studio activity around him must make things difficult, but one would have hoped that a presenter of his calibre could occasionally come up with a better question than, "What are you doing nowadays?"

There are a couple of saving graces. One nice idea is that each member of the public who rings in can donate to either notionally support "upstairs" or "downstairs" and this leads to some light-hearted rivalry between the cast members ("upstairs" ends up narrowly winning). Each member of the cast is also shown a very nicely chosen set of clips of their time on UpDown, but alas Cooke isn't usually allowed any time to get feedback before being "wound up" by the (often in-shot) floor manager – this usually leading to a flustered Cooke rubbing his temple and yet another five seconds of dead time.

Even though today we are used to a high level of technical smoothness on live TV programmes, I'm sure that such shows in the 1970s cannot all have been as fraught with problems as this, and you do end up feeling that the director and floor manager should both have been shot straight after the "Copyright WGBH" caption faded. In the end, the only thing a modern viewer is likely to find of interest in this celebration is seeing how the stars of UpDown looked in their 1970s dress and haircuts.

This programme is not available on DVD.

For pictures from this documentary, please see my Upstairs, Downstairs Farewell Picture Album.

2nd June 1996 (LWT – not networked)
Upstairs, Downstairs Remembered

Researcher: Chris Brogden
Executive Producer: James Allen
Produced and Directed by Richard Marson
Presented by Gareth Hunt
With: Simon Williams, Meg Wynn Owen, Nicola Pagett, Jacqueline Tong, Jenny Tomasin, Chris Beeny, Jean Marsh, John Hawkesworth, Freddy Shaughnessy and Fay Weldon
Running time: 60 mins. (inc. commercials)

Upstairs, Downstairs Remembered takes an affectionate look back on the series on the occasion of its 25th anniversary. A selection of the surviving cast members and production team speak about the programme from rooms in the Duke of York's Territorial Army barracks, off the King's Road in London. This location was often where the original Upstairs, Downstairs episodes themselves had been rehearsed, and provides suitably elegant settings for the interviews.

The main problem with the documentary is that it consists almost solely of these new interviews, together with a few clips from the original episodes. All the interview locations have very similar backgrounds to them (i.e. behind the interviewees) and by the 30-minute mark, it's all beginning to get a bit samey. There may have been a budgetary problem but what the programme could also have benefited from is some archive material to break things up. Old interviews of Jackson, Baddeley et al. would have been ideal, as this would have helped rebalance the show away from the younger cast members.

Also, the whole show tends to be a bit "generic", as if the director had simply said to the participants, "Right, sum up, in general terms, what UpDown meant to you," and then filmed the resulting comments. There is a lack of specific anecdotes about the making of the individual Upstairs, Downstairs segments. For instance, were there any funny moments during shooting, or any guest stars that impressed the cast? Were there any bust-ups behind the scenes?

Having said this, the documentary remains consistent and focused throughout – not losing its thread for a single moment – and is competently shot, especially the excellent linking material with Gareth Hunt strolling down Eaton Place on a bright sunny day.

The programme was later reshown in an abridged half-hour repeat. It also became included as a sort of optional extra in LWT's sales of the series to foreign broadcasters, though these copies often lack any on-screen captions identifying the contributors. Rushes from the documentary were used by Stephen La Rivière in his extensive five-part documentary about UpDown in Network's DVD releases (see below).

The producer, Richard Marson, covers the making of this documentary in his book, Inside UpDown.

For pictures from this documentary, please see my Upstairs, Downstairs Remembered Picture Album.

4th August 2002 (Granada-Tyne Tees for ITV1)
After Upstairs, Downstairs

Archive Associate Producer: Camilla Wheeler
Archive Researcher: Michelle Turner
Writer: Stuart Maconie
Assistant Producers: Emily Louth and Ann Breeze
Executive Producer: Judith Holder
Produced and Directed by Helen Slater
Narrated by Matthew Kelly
With: Hannah Gordon, Simon Williams, Jackie Tong, Jean Marsh, Gareth Hunt, Jenny Tomasin, Lesley-Anne Down, Meg Wynn Owen and Sheila Jackson
Running time: 60 mins. (inc. commercials)

Rather than being the linear/chronological account of the making of the series that Upstairs, Downstairs Remembered (above) was, After Upstairs, Downstairs reflects its more popularist prime-time slot by being more of a grab bag of reminiscences about the show and it doesn't really seek to portray the genesis of the original series in any great detail. In keeping with the umbrella theme of the After... set of programmes, it concentrates a lot more on what the actors got up to after the show had finished for good in 1975. Included here are memories of Gordon Jackson and Angela Baddeley, but sadly David Langton isn't even mentioned once, which is a shame given he was such a lynchpin of the original series.

The first three parts of the documentary are mainly given over to the cast remembering the original series, with interviews shot on location at Ham House in Richmond, Surrey, and the Milestone Hotel in Kensington. There are some nice clips in amongst the interviews, including a montage of comedy skits done on the show (The Two Ronnies, Stanley Baxter, and the Carry On team) and an appearance of one of the TV commercials that Jenny Tomasin did for Goblin vacuum cleaners.

The fourth part – and centrepiece of the programme – features a reunion between most of the surviving cast, though once again, husband-and-wife Pauline Collins and John Alderton are absent from all the proceedings – their characters are only mentioned once, briefly, in the whole documentary. Bizarrely set to In The Mood by Glenn Miller (wrong war, folks), the reunion shows the cast meeting outside (1)65 Eaton Place and then enjoying a meal together (ostensibly inside the house, though the sharp eyed will spot the deception, since some of the cast wear different clothes in the interior sequences). It's a nice idea, but the result is a bit superficial and it ends up just being a random bunch of shots of the cast toasting the show, perusing old photos, and trying to look interested. The ending, with Lesley-Anne Down following on behind the rest and taking a reflective look back at the house, is a nice touch though.

This programme is not available on DVD.

For pictures from this documentary, please see my After Upstairs, Downstairs Picture Album.

19th September 2005 (Swinging Star for Network)
The Story of Upstairs, Downstairs – Part One – On Trial: Spring 1969 to Spring 1972

Editor: Thomas Cock
Associate Producer: Sylvia Styring-Hill
Director: Stephen La Rivière
With: Fay Weldon, Charlotte Bingham, Terence Brady, Simon Williams, Jean Marsh, George Innes, Evin Crowley, Jeremy Paul, Rosemary Anne Sisson, and in rush material from Upstairs, Downstairs Remembered (see above): John Hawkesworth, Nicola Pagett and Alfred Shaughnessy
Running time: 56 mins.

This documentary appears on the UK Season One box set of DVDs released by Network. This release includes commentaries on several episodes as follows:
On Trial with Jean Marsh (Rose), Fay Weldon (writer) and Evin Crowley (Emily).
Board Wages with Terence Brady, Charlotte Bingham (writers) and Evin Crowley.
A Suitable Marriage with by George Innes (Alfred).
I Dies from Love with Brady/Bingham and Evin Crowley.
A Voice from the Past with Simon Williams (James), Jean Marsh and Jeremy Paul (writer).
For Love of Love with Simon Williams, Jean Marsh and Rosemary Anne Sisson (writer).

For pictures from this series of documentaries, please see my The Story of Upstairs, Downstairs Picture Album.

22nd December 2005 (Talent Television for ITV1)
Upstairs, Downstairs – Must See TV

Hosted by Patsy Kensit
Consultant/Writer: Colin Edmonds
Researchers: Paul Banks, Catherine Coleman and Iona Mackenzie
Archive Researchers: Suzanne Gray and Robert Heading
Associate Producers: Gemma Beeney and Michelle Foreman
Line Producer: Adam Hayes
Executive Producer: Tony Humphreys
Series Producers: John Kaye Cooper and Tony Nicholson
Producer/Director: Tom Atkinson
With: Lesley-Anne Down, Jean Marsh, George Innes, Christopher Beeny, Evin Crowley, Simon Williams, Jacqueline Tong, Meg Wynn Owen and Gareth Hunt
Running time: 30 mins. (inc. commercials)

This programme is not available on video or DVD.

27th February 2006 (Swinging Star for Network)
The Story of Upstairs, Downstairs – Part Two – On With the Dance: Spring 1972 to January 1973

Editor: Thomas Cock
Associate Producers: Sylvia Styring-Hill, Thomas Cock
Produced and Directed by Stephen La Rivière
With: Terry Griffiths, Alexander Faris, Evin Crowley, Simon Williams, Rosemary Anne Sisson, Ian Ogilvy, Lee Rowe, Bert Wilkins, Alfred Shaughnessy, Jean Marsh, Jeremy Paul, Nicola Pagett, Terence Brady, Charlotte Bingham, Christopher Hodson, Jenny Tomasin, Christopher Beeny, and in rush material from Upstairs, Downstairs Remembered (see above): John Hawkesworth
Running time: 52 mins.

This documentary appears on the UK Season Two box set of DVDs released by Network. This release includes commentaries on several episodes as follows:
The New Man with Nicola Pagett (Elizabeth), Rosemary Anne Sisson (writer), Jean Marsh (Rose/co-creator) and Ian Ogilvy (Lawrence).
A Pair of Exiles with Simon Williams (James) and Alfred Shaughnessy (script editor/co-creator).
Whom God hath Joined... with Jean Marsh, Nicola Pagett, Jeremy Paul (writer) and Ian Ogilvy.
A Family Gathering with Simon Williams, Jean Marsh and Nicola Pagett.

The set also contains Simon Williams & Alfred Shaughnessy in Conversation, a 23-minute featurette with Shaughnessy's last interview about the series.

1st May 2006 (Swinging Star for Network)
The Story of Upstairs, Downstairs – Part Three – A Change of Scene: Spring 1973 to January 1974

Editor: Thomas Cock
Associate Producers: Sylvia Styring-Hill, Thomas Cock
Produced and Directed by Stephen La Rivière
With: Jean Marsh, Alfred Shaughnessy, Simon Williams, Christopher Hodson, Terence Brady, Charlotte Bingham, Rosemary Anne Sisson, Lee Rowe, Bert Wilkins, Jenny Tomasin, Meg Wynn Owen, Jacqueline Tong, John Quayle, Jeremy Paul, George Innes, and in rush material from Upstairs, Downstairs Remembered (see above): John Hawkesworth
Running time: 56 mins.

This documentary appears on the UK Season Three box set of DVDs released by Network. This release includes commentaries on several episodes as follows:
Miss Forrest with Meg Wynn Owen (Hazel) and Simon Williams (James).
A House Divided with Jean Marsh (Rose/co-creator), Rosemary Anne Sisson (writer) and Christopher Hodson (director).
Rose's Pigeon with Jean Marsh, Jeremy Paul (writer) and George Innes (Alfred).
Goodwill to All Men with Jean Marsh, Christopher Hodson and Jacqueline Tong (Daisy).
Distant Thunder with Meg Wynn Owen and Simon Williams.
The Sudden Storm with Jean Marsh and Jacqueline Tong.

The set also contains Sandy's Last Stand, a 13-minute featurette which interviews composer Alexander Faris about his theme music for the programme, and includes orchestral recordings of the various versions of the tune.

28th August 2006 (Swinging Star for Network)
The Story of Upstairs, Downstairs – Part Four – The Beastly Hun: January 1974 to January 1975

Editor: Thomas Cock
Associate Producers: Sylvia Styring-Hill, Thomas Cock
Produced and Directed by Stephen La Rivière
With: Simon Williams, Jeremy Paul, Rosemary Anne Sisson, Meg Wynn Owen, Jean Marsh, Lesley-Anne Down, Jacqueline Tong, Christopher Hodson, Lee Rowe, Bert Wilkins, Alfred Shaughnessy, Christopher Beeny, Jenny Tomasin, and in rush material from Upstairs, Downstairs Remembered (see above): John Hawkesworth
Running time: 50 mins.

This documentary appears on the UK Season Four box set of DVDs released by Network. This release includes commentaries on several episodes as follows:
A Patriotic Offering with Rosemary Anne Sisson (writer), Jean Marsh (Rose/co-creator) and Jacqueline Tong (Daisy).
Women shall not Weep with Christopher Beeny (Edward), Christopher Hodson (director), Jean Marsh and Jacqueline Tong.
The Glorious Dead with Jean Marsh, Meg Wynn Owen (Hazel) and Simon Williams (James).
Peace out of Pain with Jean Marsh, Meg Wynn Owen and Simon Williams.

6th November 2006 (Swinging Star for Network)
The Story of Upstairs, Downstairs – Part Five – Whither Shall I Wander? – January 1975 to Summer 2006

Editor: Thomas Cock
Associate Producers: Sylvia Styring-Hill, Thomas Cock
Produced and Directed by Stephen La Rivière
With: Jean Marsh, Simon Williams, Jeremy Paul, Rosemary Anne Sisson, Jacqueline Tong, Karen Dotrice, Lesley-Anne Down, Jenny Tomasin, Gareth Hunt, Christopher Hodson, Simon Langton, Alfred Shaughnessy, Christopher Beeny, Lee Rowe, Bert Wilkins, Anthony Andrews, Terence Brady, Charlotte Bingham, Evin Crowley, Nicola Pagett, John Quayle, Meg Wynn Owen, Fay Weldon, George Innes, and in rush material from Upstairs, Downstairs Remembered (see above): John Hawkesworth
Running time: 56 mins.

This documentary appears on the UK Season Five box set of DVDs released by Network. This release includes commentaries on several episodes as follows:
Disillusion with Karen Dotrice (Lily).
Such A Lovely Man with Rosemary Anne Sisson (writer), Jenny Tomasin (Ruby), Simon Williams (James) and Jean Marsh (Rose/co-creator).
All the King's Horses with Simon Williams, Jeremy Paul (writer), Jean Marsh and Simon Langton (director).
Whither Shall I Wander? with Jean Marsh, Simon Williams, Rosemary Anne Sisson (writer, of other segments) and Jeremy Paul (writer, of other segments).

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