It's filmed right near to where I live!! (The Edwardian Country House)

Member Name: Flibble

Product:	The Edwardian Country House
Date:	03/05/02 (232 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: History brought alive, Wonderful location

Disadvantages: None

One of the biggest TV genres to emerge recently has to be the ‘docu-soap’ or ‘fly-on-the-wall’ style of programme that became so popular due to shows such as ‘Big Brother’. They launched spin off’s such as ‘The 1900 House’. The same people who created that television show have now produced another similar programme, entitled ‘The Edwardian Country House’.

Now, the very title alone will kind of give you an idea about the show itself – but here’s the deal. After a nationwide campaign, a group of volunteers have been selected to live in a country manor house as either the Owners of the house, or the servants. Now – if it were me, I’d have wanted to be a ‘lord of the manor’ type character, but knowing my luck I’d have ended up being a skivvy!

Before I really dive into the opinion, I’ll give you a little bit of background info. I live in a village called Greenlaw, which is in the South East Scottish Borders. About ten minutes away from me is a town called Duns. Now, in Duns is a country house called ‘Manderston’. It’s pretty well hidden from the beaten track, you can see the entrance to it, but that’s about it – no sign of the actual house really. Anyway, about four or five months ago I was driving into Berwick (I promise this will make sense eventually.) As I was driving past the signs for Manderston there were notices up saying ‘Closed for filming’. Bizarre enough I though, but kept on my journey. A few hours later I was coming home along the same road, only to see a load of people dressed up in Edwardian period clothing. At this point I decided the following theories could explain it:

a) It really is true, if you keep your clothes for long enough, they will eventually come back into fashion (although maybe over 100 years is stretching things a little)

b) Somehow I ha
d crossed through space and time to end up in Duns circa 1900 – again this was stretching credibility somewhat, but anything is possible.

c) They are filming a period drama at Manderston house.

Now, call me daft, but I settled for option C. And it turns out I was right.

The local press were soon on the story and the hype was beginning. Channel 4 were putting two sets of people into Manderston for three months. The first group of people are the ‘upstairs’ bunch. This consists of a ‘Lord’ and ‘Lady’ and their two children – one in his late teens, the other around eleven. The next group of people are the ‘downstairs’ people. These are the servants who keep the house running.

For the duration of the show, everything is as authentic as possible – no modern facilities here. Absolutely every last detail is as authentic as possible. The show focuses on the type of lives such people would lead during the Edwardian era. For the upstairs family, things are pretty cushy really. They get to live in a beautiful (and it really is exceptional) house with some amazing grounds. With all these servants at your beckon call, you’d think that everyone would be living the life of luxury.

Things are quite like that though. What becomes immediately obvious is that you can become very bored very quickly – you can’t stick on a DVD, or watch the football on telly. The ‘family’ are soon realising that their days are filled with very little of interest – organising dinner parties and seating plans is only fun for so long. Perhaps they haven’t got such a sweet deal after all.

The real emphasis (and fun) of the show however is on the ‘downstairs’ people. Here we have a group of strangers who have been thrust together who need to work as a team in order to keep the house running efficiently. So far the show has
been running for two weeks and the most immediately obvious things are just how hard work it is to be a servant, and secondly that very few of the people know what they should be doing.

In charge overall of the servants is Mr Edgar, in the real world he is an architect, but here he has to deal as a kind of manager – organising the staff is no easy task as many of them moan about the hard work and little praise they receive. The other main character has to be the Chef, a French guy who is completely loopy, he seems to run around like a headless chicken yelling I French and generally creating a bad atmosphere for those who work with him.

We also have a bunch of young lads who are footmen and hall boys – one of the real quotes last night came from the second footmen who remarked ‘I just feel like saying ‘do it yourself, I’m going to the pub and getting lashed’ They are all a likeable enough bunch, but already we’ve seen two scullery maids leave having been unable to cope with the strict regimes and discipline that is being instilled upon them.

The show is really enjoyable – I enjoy old buildings – such as Chatsworth house for example, so the chance to see such a fantastic building is a real treat for me. Also, the humour of the young lads who work there just seems to be something I relate too. Of course, the fact that it’s a kind of ‘local’ building to me also adds a fair amount of interest too. The interaction between the family and servants, as well as in-fighting certainly livens things up too!

It’s great to see history brought alive in this way, each episode is on for an hour and the time really does fly by. Each week they have a kind of ‘event’ to focus on. In episode one it was the general introduction of the characters, last night they had their first dinner party (who they invited David Mellor to for some unknown reason!) it make
s for pretty compulsive viewing.

You can catch ‘The Edwardian House’ on Channel 4, it’s shown on Tuesday evenings from 9:00 PM.

If you want to read a bit more behind the scenes information, then why not go to the official website, which you can find on www.channel4.com

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