Hmm, what if Downton Abbey, but again? I know you were wondering about it, and I was wondering too, and clearly so were ITV execs, who have commissioned one of Julian Fellowes’s books – about the intersection of high society and low, set against the distant, foggy, soft threat of war – and basically it is Downton Abbey, but again, only this time it is called Belgravia.
The thing is, I don’t particularly see anything wrong with making another jelly from the Downton mould, because the first did such a good job of pleasing the party. If you are a Downton head, do these scenes from Belgravia (Sunday, 9pm, ITV) not all sound delicious? A young servant girl struggles to step in pace while calling her young mistress “Miss!”; a patriarch of low birth sternly corrects a young soldier who addresses him by a slightly incorrect title; mother frets about the party; a gruff older butler keeps a hot-headed young servant boy in check by saying something like: “Master’s always been very fine to me, very fine indeed”; someone dies of an illness that could easily be treated with paracetamol; after a tense dinner, someone pours port out of a slender crystal decanter; a room full of women in fine silk gloves titter when someone mildly poorer than them walks in. You get the idea.
It’s not for me, but Belgravia is a perfect fit for ITV’s hallowed “teatime period hour-long, where a lot of the drama comes from people whispering about manners”, and for that reason it will almost certainly go gangbusters like the genre-maker that came before it. More choice cuts: every man on screen has a set of mutton chops; the entire battle of Waterloo is skimmed over by an ad break; after a “26 Years Later” interstitial, Tamsin Greig doesn’t age a single day; a matriarch who is widely considered to be rude and intimidating is, with a sly smile, nice for no reason to one of our main characters. The core storyline at the centre of Belgravia is about love across the class divide, and servants having banter over a lowly beef stew, and women in complex petticoats sitting down extremely carefully before being rude to each other.
Maybe I just don’t get it. Maybe I don’t understand the thrill of slow-moving costume dramas where The Lady of the House’s main problem is whether or not to go to a ball. I don’t want to get political – there is no reason to compare the indulgence of dipping into an hour of Victorian high society with current poverty rates today, as if enjoying a low jeopardy drama is akin to voting through austerity – but I do find it hard to care for any character in any period piece where the house employs someone to wordlessly stoke a fireplace.
For my money, Belgravia does the job, but not wildly well: there are absolutely zero standout performances, there is no zip to the scripted tete-a-tetes. The story has the ambition of a multi-generational, flashback-led country house drama with a core secret, but ultimately falls short, so it ends up just as a series of old women being a bit of a bitch to Tamsin Greig. But, you know, if you have a Downton-shaped hole in your life, Belgravia is here to fill it. If not, then ... I don’t know. Don’t watch it, I guess?
