Or, with Julian Fellowes writing a country house located upstairs/downstairs drama for the Dame again, Gosford Park II.
It's just started being screened on UK television and so I guess it will make its way Stateside if it hasn't done so already.
I approached it with trepidation thinking you can have too much of a good thing and it is also one of commercial television's regular, and often unsuccesful, attempts to knock the BBC off its costume drama pedestal.
However Maggie gets to look down her nose like it was a ski-run and, playing against gender, Highclere Castle looks absolutely magnificent in the title role: the interiors were done on location and look as fresh as they must have done when the place was built. The plot isn't going to score for originality, but there is one delicious sub plot involving a Duke and his valet that would never have made into a novel of the time (unless it was an unpublished work by EM Forster).
Next week: the new aspirant middle classes move further up the drive towards the Abbey. Will they make it in time for WWI or will they be seen off with a volley of cucumber sandwiches?
I still wish her best and most moving dramatic performance in THE LONELY PASSION OF JUDITH HEARNE was on DVD. She's scary good in it.
"Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”
~ Muhammad Ali
Although there is no need for the talked about remake of My Fair Lady, I'd go see it if Maggie Smith were cast as Mrs. Higgins, particularly if Hugh Laurie were Higgins.
"It does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are 20 gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my leg."
-- Thomas Jefferson
My favorite Maggie Smith performance is in BED AMONG THE LENTILS. Love the dear lady, and all due respect to one of our greatest actresses, but she'd been coasting for a looooooooong time now, seldom as blatantly as in that tedious GOSFORD PARK.
"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." Thomas Pynchon, GRAVITY'S RAINBOW
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." Philip K. Dick
My blog: http://www.roscoewrites.blogspot.com/
I must say, I'm enjoying this a great deal so far. Always nice to see The Lovely Dan Stevens, and Charlie Cox... actually, I can't fairly comment on his performance, I was distracted. I love the Earl of Grantham's dog though. :3
I take this as a sign that I am a good parent: my three kids all LOVE Maggie Smith. And I'm not talking (just) Harry Potter, I'm talking Jean Brodie, Gosford Park, etc.
"It does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are 20 gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my leg."
-- Thomas Jefferson
I never thought I'd see a reference to Bed Among The Lentils on here! My own personal favourite from that series was Thora Hird's too-proud-to-cry-for-help performance in A Cream Cracker under the Settee.
And I must admit I too thought Gosford Park was over-rated. It was an enjoyable romp but I didn't understand why everyone else was raving about it as being insightful and original.
I'm beginning to hope Downton Abbey may deliver more: having now viewed the promo that Reggie links, we've seen about half of it in the first two episodes. There are loads of clues in the script about the way things may develop and there seems to be a strong undertone of unrest and unease. Even the score is both serene and forboding.
And the lovely Dan Stevens is no longer advertising instant coffee (as in my avatar). I hope that isn't him being injured in the promo.
I also caught up on my DVRed episodes this weekend and LOVE it. I wish it were a full season long, rather than the four episodes. However, I understand that a sequel is being filmed later on this year. Updated On: 1/25/11 at 01:26 PM