Vocal Voices

Is it me, or is it getting a bit tired?

I still like it no end, but the melodrama is getting a bit much for me.

It is a bit like an unstoppable juggernaut, but it's prime TV at its best ....

Lady Mary gets more and more like a depressed Olive Oyl each time I see her

(who was the girl that answered the advert for the lady's maid? Are we supposed to know her?)

OMG Loz yes that is it!!!!! She honestly does

Frank it's getting a bit anachronistic, with servants speaking in such a familiar way to the Lords and Ladies - wouldn't have happened especially in such an aristocratic household. My GG Aunty Ethel''s 'family' (she was in service in a big house in Essex, from 1907 until the 1930s) were 'only' gentry not aristocrats, but no way would they ever have allowed the servants such leeway It just wasn't done I knew Aunty Ethel pretty well when I was little and heard lots of stories from those days.......Some of the language seems a bit modern too..... "I have a hunch......" ???? Only Quasimodo would have had a hunch in those days, an English servant would have had an idea..... Such Americanisms only crept into the vernacular here after talkies came in, at the end of the 20s..........

There aren't enough servants either - a house that size and that prestigious would have had at least 50 or 60 servants in those days, many maids, and under kitchen staff and garden staff, not just a couple of parlour maids and a couple of kitchen 'tweenies'..... The nanny would also have had nursery maids, at least two! Julian Fellows must know that very well, with his background, but must have decided that would spread the drama too thinly......

I still love it though

Lozzles wrote:
(who was the girl that answered the advert for the lady's maid? Are we supposed to know her?)

I think she was the maid who got rather too close to Branson, just after Sybil died Mrs Hughes gave her a glowing reference so they (the upper servants) could get rid, as they could see what might happen - although she could hardly tell Lady Cora that.......

Not really my sort of programme but I did put it on for a minute or two once when a visiting dignitary enticed a chambermaid into his bedroom but she escaped unscathed. Loved what I saw of the cars and think the show needs a little more spice, like her ladyship catching him in bed wth a maid or even her ladyship herself doing a Lady Chatterley with a gamekeeper