British Costume Drama Escapism
We all have our secret pleasures — especially during the pandemic purgatory. (I won’t call them “guilty” pleasures because I agree with Fran Lebowitz that there should be no such thing). For me, it’s British costume dramas (among other “vices”). But forget the new Masterpiece Theatre offerings — the one about the Victorian female detective, which manages to stuff every cliche into its stillborn drama; and the new “All Creatures Great and Small,” with its snivelly lead character and its obsession with penetrating cows’ bum holes. Instead, I recommend digging back into the streaming treasures of yesteryear — when fortunately I wasn’t yet watching British TV or it was unavailable in the States.
Here are two of my favorite gems from the past:
Bleak House — the 2005 BBC production of the Charles Dickens classic, adapted by the talented writer Andrew Davies, and featuring an all-star cast, including Gillian Anderson, Charles Dance (nobody plays a better villain), Denis Lawson and Anna Maxwell Martin. Dickens brilliantly drew character roles — the conniving and the buffoonish (or combined) — and Burn Gorman as the oily Guppy and Phil Davis as the cartoonish Smallweed nearly steal the 8-episode show.
Cranford — a 2007-2010 BBC series about love and intrigue in an 1840s English village, based on the novellas of Elizabeth Gaskell and featuring another all-star cast, including Judi Dench, Jim Carter and Michelle Dockery (later of “Downton Abbey” fame), Eileen Atkins, Tom Hiddleston, Jonathan Pryce, Imelda Staunton, Michael Gambon etc. Part of the joy of this two-season series is just recognizing actors you’ve long admired strut their time upon the “Cranford” stage.
See also: “Detectorists” and “W1A,” two comedies I’ve hyped before; the remake of “Upstairs, Downstairs” and the historical farm documentary series (the Victorian farm, Edwardian farm and Wartime farm (WW II). Scholars Ruth Goodman, Alex Langlands, and Peter Ginn have become as adorable to me as the performers in beloved drama.
