Eventually fame and fortune leads Louisa to open a private hotel. Catering for a select clientelle and featuring more of Louisa's amazing catering the staff and guests of the Bentink Hotel are more like a large, rather effluent family. But Ms Trotter remembers where she came from, treats her staff with firm fairness and her guests with motherly distain...

From the era of Upstairs Downstairs (the show's creator did that one before "Duchess" and Danger UXB immediately after), we get another tale of the upper and lower class combines, this time from the perspective of a servant who rose in social rank and refuses to have any affectation with the niceties of the wealthy. Lousia Trotter is a wonderful believable character who, while remembering her roots and treating her staff with a remarkable degree of loyalty, never lets any of them forget who is in charge. In a like manner, many of the more elderly staff have problems with thinking of themselves as equal to their affluent clientelle while at the same time providing appropriately deferential service.

Very much a " I know him... don't I?" kind of show, you will see lots of familiar faces that you can't quite place.

Let me see if I can help...

Gemma Jones, who plays Louisa Trotter, turns up almost thirty years later as Bridget's manic mum in Bridget Jones Diary. Christopher Cazenove was last seen as the evil stepdad in Three Men and a Little Lady. Star turns are put in by Robert Hardy (All Creatures Great and Small and most of the Harry Potter movies), Anthony Andrews (Danger UXB and Brideshead Revisited), Richard Vernon plays the Major and later appeared as Slartibartfast in the TV series of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and......  wait for it.... Ed Deveraux plays a rather overbearing American investor ten years after he was Matt Hammond, fearless Head Ranger in Skippy!

Much more watchable that I first expected it to be (thanks are owed, once again, to my wife who suggested reviewing this one), one rather finds oneself drawn into the story. The three dimensional characters, coupled with realistic life problems add a familiar edge that allows us to relate to the characters despite the fact that we are from an age that takes for granted things that Victorian society frowned upon. So women's suffrage, public health, aristocratic philandering and administrative alcoholism are all dealt with in ways that are both familiar and yet quaint.

The video quality is actually rather good for a series that is a contemporary of "Upstairs Downstairs". Although the colours tend somewhat towards the beige, the blacks are intense enough and there is none of the characteristic flaring or blooming that is so often evident on early television video recordings.

Someone must have rummaged deep in the BBC archives for this one!

Nice clean video and you want surround sound as well? You must be joking!

This is the BBC.

Be thankful that everything comes out of the centre speaker nice and clear and pray that the 'Dr Who" people never find out about subwoofers....

A deceptive one, this.

It looks like an overlong excuse for the Beeb to get it's moneys worth out of its period costume department.

It is in fact an entirely entertaining and relevant drama series with enough humour to make it entertaining.

Thoroughly enjoyable.