Pauline Collins and John Alderton reteamed as characters from Upstairs Downstairs, negotiating life with car dealers, jewel thieves and Chinese magicians. Great episode 'The Biter Bit' where they end up at a posh country house party, pretending to do 'common' accents - and it's a great laugh, until Thomas is seduced by the Lady of the house and Sarah falls in with a penniless twerp - they end up apart, having also had their Rolls Royce stolen!
Familiar style and writers from Updown. Seems to have more emphasis on comedy. And whatever crazy scheme they get in to (racing car driver, marriage bureau, teacher at boys's school, photographer) they never end up better off, like the coin toss in the titles scene.
Episode in which Sarah has lied about being pregnant shows John at his most intense and angry - great stuff.
I read in Richard Marson's 'Inside Updown' that the series was problematic because Freddie Shaughnessy wanted something more linear like Upstairs Downstairs but John Alderton, who had never got on with the writer that well, wanted something more diverse - a series of unconnected happenstances - which is what the series is - and as such, it's most entertaining as you don't know what's going to happen next. The Ritz episode was written in three days by husband-and-wife team Terence Brady and Charlotte Bingham and though we enjoyed it, we didn't quite understand it. Then the following episode, in which the couple employ servants and find they're incredibly snobby, is a real trip that subverts the whole Upstairs Downstairs formula. We certainly enjoyed it a lot more than Marson did.
The ending is a real doozy as we don't actually know if Thomas is still alive... Though a second series was commissioned; but following an eleven week strike at LWT, canned.
And - according to Schumann, Chopin's music represented "cannons hidden in flowers".
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