Shirley Comes to Downton

Despite many an eyebrow being raised - both my own included - at the disappointing quality of the often-shambolic, war torn second series of Downton Abbey last autumn, our friends across the pond cannot seem to be able to get enough of the Abbey. Last week, it was announced that the period drama de jour has been nominated for sixteen Emmy Awards - unprecedented for a British import. This is no mean feat given the extremely stiff competition to be encountered from the likes of Breaking Bad, Boardwalk Empire, Homeland, Game of Thrones and the darling of the Emmys, Mad Men.

The third series has been confirmed for September and I feel it my duty to mention that details have emerged about what us millions of devotees can expect - better pacing and characterisation, here's hoping! Beginning in the spring of 1920 and ending at Christmas in 1921, the latest run of eight episodes will feature a marriage, a birth and a death, plots involving the fight for Irish independence, Catholicism and potential financial ruin for the beleaguered Crawleys and the much-anticipated guest appearance of Shirley Mac Laine as Lord Grantham's mother-in-law Martha (pictured above).

The always-entertaining MacLaine recently attended a press conference in Los Angeles with some of her fellow cast members during which Hugh Bonneville revealed a T-shirt bearing the slogan FREE THE DOWNTON ONE much to the delight of his co-star and sometime Mr Bates, Brendan Coyle. Meanwhile, when asked if she had ever met Dame Maggie Smith before filming sparring scenes with her at the start of 2012 for Downton, reincarnation enthusiast MacLaine merely said "We were lovers in a previous life!" Maggie was not available for comment.

Legend of the Seas on Sky

There is, as I have reported on this very blog over the last few months, a festival of delights to look forward to on both the big and small screens in the autumn, period drama-wise. September will herald the return - and hopefully the return to form - of Downton Abbey. Martha Levinson will arrive in the first episode of the third series for her granddaughter Mary's wedding to Matthew, now that his spine has re-aligned, and is set to put the cat among the pigeons as only a brash and blunt American can in a drama by Julian Fellowes. Alongside Shirley MacLaine as Martha, new cast members will include Ed Speelers and Matt Milne as newbie footmen Jimmy and Alfred and Charles Edwards as a suitor to the unlucky-in-love Lady Edith. I predict good things for season three but, just in case Downton continues on its slippery slope, hopes must surely be high over on BBC2 for Tom Stoppard's take on women's suffrage, life in the trenches and the Roaring Twenties with his adaptation of Ford Maddox Ford's Parade's End tetralogy of novels starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Rebecca Hall. Meanwhile, at a cinema near you this fall will be many promising literary adaptations including Anna Karenina, Great Expectations, Romeo and Juliet, Les Miserables and Cheerful Weather for the Wedding (more of that anon).

Summer is, alas, never a great time for period drama enthusiasts although a new programme on Sky  pricked my interest last weekend. Their lavish new fantasy adventure Sinbad began last Sunday with a thoroughly entertaining season opener and is set to fit the bill as fun and undemanding escapism for the next twelve weeks. Very much influenced by the BBC's global success story Merlin, it goes back to the beginning with a famous mythological hero, is set in The Past and features veiled figures muttering in alleys about a return to the old ways. We first meet Sinbad the Sailor of Arabian Nights renown as a cheeky chap knocking around Basra sometime in The Past, making mischief and harbouring not a jot of desire to set sail when he unwittingly brings about the death of his sensible older brother, changing the course of his life forever. A gypsy curse is placed on him by his exasperated grandmother that sees him cast out from his carefree existence to drift the seven seas and atone for his misdeeds so he stows away on a ship manned by a motley crew of mysterious and madcap seafarers and his adventures begin.

Featuring more CGI sea monsters and cliches about the Middle East than you can shake a stick at, Sinbad is boosted by an abundance of energy, quirky characters and a charismatic central performance from newcomer Elliot Knight (pictured above) alongside an acclaimed supporting cast that includes Elliot Cowan, Dimitri Leonidas, Naveen Andrews, Orla Brady, Evanna Lynch, Sophie Okonedo and a rare screen performance from Dame Janet Suzman, having a good time as the curse-happy Granny and no doubt supplementing her income from her latest book of theatre criticism, Not Hamlet - Meditations on the Frail Position of Women in Drama, which, although undoubtedly an absorbing read, is hardly, one suspects, troubling Fifty Shades of Grey on the bestseller lists.

In A World of Fantasy

Romances, espionage thrillers, war epics and, increasingly, sitcoms are all genres that often find themselves intertwined with the business of this blog but perhaps the genre most closely related to the period drama is fantasy. Following swiftly on the designer heels of Charlize Theron playing Snow White's evil stepmother as a sort of demented trophy wife refusing to yield to the passage of time in Rupert Sanders's disappointingly haphazard yet moderately inventive version of the classic fairytale, a villainous Angelina Jolie will star in Maleficient. Telling the legend of Sleeping Beauty from the perspective of the sorceress who curses the young princess with a debilitating dose of narcolepsy, the live-action movie from Oscar-winning production designer Richard Stromberg and Walt Disney Pictures will feature Elle Fanning as Aurora alongside Miranda Richardson as Queen Ulla, Maleficient's aunt with a strong dislike for her niece. Will this version suggest that her hostile relations are the reason for Maleficient's fondness for malice? What about personal responsibility, Disney? Harry Potter's hateful aunt kept him in a cupboard for ten years and he didn't go to the bad!! Anywho, Lesley Manville, Imelda Staunton and Juno Temple will play Sleeping Beauty's fairy guardians Flittle, Knotgrass and Thistletwit in the film which is due for release in spring 2014.

Miss Temple is a young lady from London whose name you may not recognise but who has starred in many movies since her debut as Cate Blanchett's daughter in 2006's Notes on a Scandal. Since then, she has been seen in an eclectic mix of British period dramas like Atonement and Glorious 39, small-scale American indie films Greenberg and Kaboom and major blockbusters The Three Musketeers and, this summer, The Dark Knight Rises. Her performance in the forthcoming Batman movie coupled with her much-publicised role as trailer-trash innocent Dottie in the controversy magnet Killer Joe will do wonders for her profile and be music to the ears of the producers of Girls' Night Out, in which Temple will appear as Princess Margaret. From a screenplay by Trevor de Silva, the period drama is set on VE Day in 1945 and will imagine that Margaret and her big sister left the palace to celebrate their country's victory with ordinary Londoners on that historic night and encountered danger and romance along the way. When one considers that that particular family's lives have decidedly not been short on exciting incident as they stand, it does seem somewhat pointless to present this embroidered fantasy to cinemagoers although the Period Drama King blog will reserve judgement.

Coincidentally, although probably not that coincidentally considering the phenomenal success of The King's Speech eighteen months ago, the current British monarch's parents will feature prominently in another imminent period drama release. Hyde Park on Hudson tells of a weekend that Bertie and Elizabeth spent in 1939 with the American president Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor at the country retreat in upstage New York which gives the film its title. The historically and politically significant visit is hampered by clashes of culture but FDR, given the looming threat of war, is determined to form an alliance between the two nations. The comedy drama, directed by Roger Michell of 1995's Persuasion, is told from the perspective of the president's devoted cousin Margaret Stuckley and stars Laura Linney as Margaret, Bill Murray and Olivia Williams as the Roosevelts and Samuel West and Olivia Colman as the Windsors. Also in the film are Blake Ritson, who interestingly played Bertie's brother the Dule of Kent in the ill-fated Upstairs Downstairs revival, and the one-and-only Eleanor Bron. Another 1960s icon who is rarely seen on screen nowadays is Dame Diana Rigg, although pictures emerged this week (one of which is above) of the Dame on the set of Doctor Who with series regulars Matt Smith and Jenna-Louise Coleman. In another period drama-fantasy crossover. she is filming a guest role in an episode written by Mark Gatiss, set in Victorian times and also starring her daughter Rachael Stirling. BBC, how I love thee!

Death and the Madame

It seems that the entire creative team behind the forthcoming movie adaptation of the fantastically popular stage musical Les Miserables are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. No sooner had the teaser trailer for the December release, which is still being filmed at Pinewood Studios in London, been posted on this here interweb than the musical theatre blogs were alive with the sound of dissent, the central complaint from many of the bloggers being that the director Tom Hooper was daring to create a cinematic experience rather than imitate the stage show. If Les Miserables were to remain slavishly devoted to its theatrical origins it might pacify some but would almost surely alienate many, many more. Although the task of re-imagining The Glums for the big screen as a Christmas crowdpleaser for the masses has undoubtedly led to many a headache in the production office, the trailer suggests to me that our beloved Les Mis (I have been known to hear the people sing on many an occasion myself) is in safe hands and is certainly not being attempted on a shoestring budget. The rouge for the lovely ladies alone must have cost a pretty penny!

Emile Zola, fellow Frenchman and literary contemporary of Les Miserables's Victor Hugo, will also soon return to the big screen with a promising new adaptation of his 1873 psychological thriller Therese Raquin. Following the affairs of an unfortunate menage a trois, debut director Charlie Stratton's treatment of the classic tale features Elizabeth Olsen, younger sister to Mary-Kate and Ashley, as the eponymous heroine who, after being cajoled into marrying her sickly cousin Camille by her conniving aunt, finds herself falling desperately in love with Camille's charming best friend Laurent and escaping her unhappy life as Madame Raquin by murdering her other half. The tangled web of deceit and obsession will be woven by a stellar cast of Brits and Americans including Tom Felton as Camille, Oscar Isaac as Laurent, Jessica Lange (pictured above) as the aunt, Matt Lucas, Mackenzie Crook and Shirley Henderson. Before getting her tragic heroine groove on for Therese Raquin, Olsen filmed a role in Kill Your Darlings, the story of an early encounter in 1944 between the great poets of America's beat generation. Starring Felton's one-time Harry Potter nemesis Daniel Radcliffe as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Huston, the latest member of a slightly more salubrious acting dynasty than Miss Olsen, as Jack Kerouac, Kill Your Darlings should coincide nicely with the release of an adaptation of Kerouac's masterpiece On The Road.

Carry On Nurse

The impressively versatile Saoirse Ronan has played a vampire, an alien, a borrower, two assassins and a dead girl after garnering an Oscar nomination for her stunningly good breakthrough performance as the troubled and troublesome young Bryony in 2007's Atonement (pictured above alongside James McAvoy). Despite rumours of her starring in Ridley Scott's version of Robin Hood and the upcoming Effie and Anna Karenina, however, she has not opted to return to a period drama role since then. That's all set to change in the near future as amidst the glitz, glamour and controversies of the annual Cannes Film Festival this week, it was announced that she will lead the cast in a new big-screen adaptation of Vera Brittain's hugely influential memoir on life as a young British woman during the First World War entitled Testament of Youth. Brittain was left utterly disillusioned by her horrific experiences volunteering as a nurse in many war-torn areas of Europe and by the personal loss and devastation she suffered between 1914 and 1918. Hailed as a major text in the history of both the pacifist and feminist movements, the 1933 bestseller was previously adapted in 1979 as a BBC television miniseries starring Cheryl Campbell as Brittain.

Cheryl Campbell was recently seen as Lady Browne, objecting most strongly to her nursing daughter Chummy's decision to train as a midwife in London's grimy yet chirpy East End, as featured in the Beeb's Sunday evening mega-hit Call the Midwife. Luckily for the well-intentioned Chummy, who'd led a sheltered life of horse-riding and Princess Margaret, Call the Midwife's East End was populated by salt-of-the-earth types who were willing to give her a chance and, in the case of one besotted bobby, take her up the aisle. Although a tad too rose-tinted at times, the series is charming and Miranda Hart's fish-out-of-water Chummy struck such a chord with audiences and critics that she's been nominated for a Supporting Actress BAFTA at tomorrow night's television ceremony. Perhaps she'll emulate the success of her on-screen mother who won in the Best Actress category for Testament of Youth but given that she's up against such heavyweight talents as Anna Chancellor for The Hour and the Smithster for Downton Abbey, it could go any way!

Now that Upstairs Downstairs has faced the music and danced off our screens for good, Call the Midwife is the great mainstream period drama hope at the British Broadcasting Corporation, who have commissioned not just an extended second series which I previously mentioned on this very blog but also a feature-length Christmas special. Although babies and the festive season go together quite nicely, I doubt that Call the Midwife at Christmas would be put so front and centre in the schedules if not for Downton Abbey's huge success on Christmas Day last year. The Downton effect continues to be felt not just at the headquarters of rival broadcasters but at ITV itself where The Bletchley Circle has become the latest of many period projects to get the green light in recent months. Starring Anna Maxwell Martin, Julie Graham, Rachael Stirling and Sophie Rundle and written by Guy Burt, the murder mystery mini-series follows four women, whose brilliant work at top security HQ Bletchley Park during World War II helped break codes used by the German military, as they reunite in the 1950s to consider crucial evidence in the unsolved murders of two of their colleagues which has recently to light........... Sounds good. 

A Few Good Men

Glenn Close has garnered much publicity and an Oscar nomination for her starring role as an Englishwoman in late-nineteenth century Dublin who lives her life as a man waiting tables in an upmarket Dublin hotel and patiently storing her money underneath the floorboards of her attic bedroom until the day she can buy a tobacco shop and live independently. Life, as it invariably does, complicates matters somewhat when her secret is discovered by a man hired to paint the hotel's pantry called Hubert Page who is also, it transpires, a woman masquerading as a man. Meeting Hubert and discovering the happiness she has found for herself suggests to Albert that her singular existence does not necessarily condemn her to a life of loneliness and she finds herself drawn to vivacious young maid Helen Dawes, who is not unattached herself having fallen for the dashing yet feckless hotel handyman Joe. Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we decide to live our lives as a member of the opposite sex...........

Close, who has wanted to play this part on the big screen for thirty years, produced the movie, handpicked the talented director Rodrigo Garcia, co-wrote the screenplay with novelist John Banville, provided the lyrics for the beautiful theme song sung by Sinéad O Connor and presumably baked the biscuits for the tea break on set. Playing A. Nobbs is undoubtedly a challenge for an actress and although she conveys Albert's curious mixture of childlike innocence and steely determination brilliantly, the character's motivations remain troublingly obscure throughout the film and we never really get to know Nobbs all that well. Janet McTeer's Hubert is a very engaging creation, however, unpredictable and surly yet kind and loving and evidently a graduate from the school of hard knocks, as are many of the supporting characters in this admirably unsentimental film. As the various staff members and guests, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Brenda Fricker, Antonia Campbell Hughes, Brendan Gleeson, Serena Brabazon, Phyllida Law and Mark Williams are all excellent although it is Pauline Collins as vicious Mrs Baker, the proprietress of Morrison's Hotel, who makes a lasting impression. For their part, Mia Wasikowska and Aaron Johnson's touching performances as Helen and Joe are undermined by their hopelessly unconvincing Irish accents.

Albert Nobbs is tellingly reminiscent of John Huston''s 1987 treatment of James Joyce's iconic story The Dead with its melancholy tone and its scenes of lavish parties attended by people living disappointed and unfulfilled lives while the snow falls outside. The film is rich in social detail and particularly strong on the lot of women and the class system without labouring either point although religion and politics seem strangely absent from conversations being held in Dublin in 1898. There is, in short, much to enjoy in Albert Nobbs but the main problem is, sadly, Albert Nobbs herself. At one point, a baffled character wonders why Albert lives her life as she does. I've sat through the movie and liked it but I'm damned if I know!

Heidi's Highs and Lows

And so the axe has fallen on the BBC's troubled revival of Upstairs Downstairs after a mere nine episodes over two series. Viewers were unimpressed by the second series and switched off in their millions leaving the powers that be with no choice but to close the doors of 165 Eaton Place and leave those of us who kept watching until the bitter end wondering what was is store for the Hollands and their servants as World War Two began. Downton Abbey is mentioned in every article I've read since this announcement was made last week suggesting that Team UP was ultimately trounced by Team DA in the battle for the hearts and minds of period drama enthusiasts in the UK and worldwide. Although this is a lazy over-simplification to my mind, it is almost certain that those who had become accustomed to the instantly-recognisable broad characters and melodramatic, undemanding storytelling of Julian Fellowes found little to interest them in Heidi Thomas's re-imagining of the 1970s classic which was an altogether subtler yet needlessly convoluted, rather humourless and far less entertaining affair.

Upstairs Downstairs was not without its merits, however, and I was as impressed as ever by Heidi Thomas's gift for dialogue and the attention to period detail in the scripts. While Mrs Bates was anachronistically adopting the phrase "As if!" to rebuke her estranged husband in Downton Abbey, the characters in Upstairs Downstairs - although fatally not that engaging - read Agatha Christie's Murder is Easy, talked about Errol Flynn and Olivia deHavilland and danced to the Lambeth Walk as though they were actually living in the late 1930s. Ms Thomas (pictured on the left above with the ladies of Cranford) must be very disappointment by the ultimate failure of her passion project but while she's coming to terms with the news and chalking it all up to experience, she can at least be comforted by the Downton-rivalling success she experienced at the start of the year with BBC's Call the Midwife, her adaptation of Jennifer Worth's memoirs based on her experiences as a newly-qualified midwife in the poverty-stricken East End of London in the 1950s.

It is difficult for broadcasters to break new ground when dramatizing the past but Call the Midwife is not based on a world-famous novel and does not feature villagers pulling together in times of strife or, indeed, members of the British aristocracy and their servants. Thomas's characteristic skill at combining grit and heart in the stories she writes for the screen, abundantly evident in the superb Cranford, has proven to be Call the Midwife's masterstroke. What with preparing for the expanded second series and writing the book for a proposed Broadway revival of the musical Gigi, she may not have all that much time to reflect on the one that got away.