Enjoy "Tea Lady" Heather online as well as on-air!
Our Afternoon Tea host Heather Sanderson delivers a weekly web column and monthly feature article, here on Tea with Heather, which complement our British television programs.
Tea Time Tidbits
Week of February 6, 2012:
Clive Swift
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Roger Lloyd-Pack and Clive Swift
in The Old Guys. |
This week I thought we'd take a break from chatting about Downton Abbey and turn instead to an actor who appears not once but twice a week on Afternoon Tea. I'm talking of course about Clive Swift, who stars as Roy in The Old Guys, at 1pm on Tuesdays and as Richard Bucket in Keeping Up Appearances Mondays through Fridays at 2pm.
This week, Swift celebrates his 76th birthday, having been born on February 9, 1936, in Liverpool, where he was, according to Swift, "virtually brought up in the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall". Swift studied piano and trombone at school and on leaving went onto study English literature at Cambridge University, and got what he called "a middling degree". Swift was much more involved with acting at Cambridge than academics and it was while there, in 1960, that he was seen by Peter Hall, who offered him a job with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford. Swift's father, Abram, who had a furniture business had already told him there was no way he was hiring him because he was such a dreamer he'd ruin him in two weeks, so he accepted Hall's offer and became a member of the RSC.
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Margaret Drabble, the former
Mrs. Clive Swift. |
As well as introducing Swift to his future career, Cambridge was also responsible for introducing Swift to his wife, acclaimed novelist Margaret Drabble. It was 1958, and both Swift and Drabble were cast in the Ibsen play Pillars of the Community. According to Drabble, "I watched everything he did with amazement and admiration". She also fell madly in love. The following year, Swift directed Drabble in the highlight of what she calls her "brief theatrical career"; it was his first - and last - attempt at directing. The couple married 1960 (they would divorce amicably in 1975) and while Drabble gave up acting to rear their children, daughter Rebecca, and sons Adam and Joe and to focus on her writing, Swift's acting career flourished.
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Swift with Patrick Stewart.
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Swift's acting resume is one of the most extensive in the business. He's appeared on stage, television and film (A Passage to India, Frenzy and Excalibur) and his passion for performing seems endless. As well as acting, Swift is also a songwriter. In 2007, he performed in a one man show that featured his songs; "Richard Bucket Overflows: An Audience with Clive Swift", which toured the UK and in 2009, he toured another show "Clive Swift Entertains", performing his own music and lyrics. Just last year, Swift recorded a radio play for the BBC's Radio 4, where he played Alfred Hitchcock alongside Patrick Stewart as Raymond Chandler, about the pair's famous collaboration on the 1950 film Strangers on a Train.
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With Anna Massey in Alfred
Hitchcock's 1972 film, Frenzy. |
Despite Swift's lengthy and highly successful acting career, it's a half hour television sitcom that brought him worldwide fame. Keeping Up Appearances was a hit from the get go. As Swift tells it "the director said that 'whatever happens in the first series we'll make another series', which was nice - thank you very much. But by episode three or four of the first series we had audiences of 14 million, which was extraordinary." In all the years the series aired the cast only ever saw Roy Clark, the show's writer, once when they were rehearsing the first episode.
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As Ector in the 1981 film, Excalibur.
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"We were all allowed to ask him one question", recalls Swift and I said 'what does Richard do?'. He had a moment's thought and said 'something very proper, something very respectable'. So I said 'that isn't much help - it could be a million things'. He said 'well I actually don't know'".
It was Swift's decision to make the meek and submissive Richard fight back, or protest occasionally. "I know I used to lose 98 per cent of the time and there was no conflict really but I had to put up a show or otherwise it's simply not interesting. If you play a mouse it's no good playing the mouse. You've got to play the potential rat. Another way of looking at it is it's like Tom and Jerry and if I had walked away there'd be no show."
Although the last episode of Keeping Up Appearances was taped 16 years ago, Swift continues to work. It's his life's blood. His ambition, in fact, is to "go on acting as long as I can and still stand up all day".
Happy birthday, Clive!
To contact Heather:
E-mail: heather@mpt.org
Address: Afternoon Tea
Maryland Public Television
11767 Owings Mills Blvd.
Owings Mills, MD 21117
Week of January 30, 2012:
Brendan Coyle
Last week we were chatting about the actress Joanne Froggatt, who plays kindly housemaid Anna Smith in Downton Abbey, so it seems only fair that this week it's the turn of her love interest, Mr. Bates, played by Brendan Coyle.
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As Robert Timmins, with wife Emma
(Claudie Blakley), in Lark Rise to Candleford. |
Coyle, who also appears in Lark Rise to Candleford, where he played Laura's father, Robert Timmins, is - thanks to Downton - currently enjoying heartthrob status. He jokingly laughs off his image as a sex symbol though and confesses it came as something of a shock. "I saw Bates as a really interesting, really well written and a very honorable character", says Coyle, "but I don't understand him being thought of as a sex symbol. Every woman I know finds it hilarious."
Born, David Coyle on December 2, 1963 in Corby, Northamptonshire, to an Irish mother and a Scottish father, Coyle is the great-nephew of the legendary Manchester United football manager Sir Matt Busby.
"Because of who I was, I had a false sense that everybody loved me as a kid", recalls Coyle. "Sir Matt used to take me to Old Trafford to watch the match and I would always go round to his house first for a drink. It was a real treat. Being a 12-year-old in the players' lounge was dazzling. And I remember him coming down to Corby to open my father's butcher shop and also to open the town sports centre. He encouraged me to play, but I was never much good at it."
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At a charity event, July 2011.
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After leaving school, Coyle followed in his father's footsteps and went to work as a trimmer in his father's shop, but he hated the job and only stayed a year. "Cows would come in at one end and go out in boxes at the other", recalls Coyle, who not surprisingly is now a vegetarian.
When after going bankrupt and never fully recovering, Coyle's father died at the age of just 42. Coyle grew disillusioned and felt the need for something different in his life and decided to enter into the acting profession.
Coyle didn't have far to look when choosing where he should do his actor training. He'd heard of a relative living in Dublin who ran a theatre that trained actors at weekends. He called her up and promptly enrolled. After finishing his training, Coyle toured Ireland as a stage manager. He also had a few walk on parts in the shows. The first time Coyle stepped on stage was as a waiter in a P.G. Wodehouse play, where he had to walk on carrying a tray with a glass of port on it. It's was an experience Coyle will never forget. "I was so nervous I nearly spilt it", recalls Coyle. "I became a comedy shaking waiter. I think the audience thought it was part of the play!"
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As John Bates, and Maria
Doyle Kennedy as Vera Bates, in Downton Abbey. |
In 1983, Brendan got a scholarship to go to the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in London and his first big break came four years later when he was cast in a play called The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist. He had to wait for over a decade, however, before becoming a well-known name in London's theatre world.
It was 1999, when Coyle was cast as the Irish barman Brendan in the multi-award winning play The Weir that his acting career really took off. His performance won him a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actor and after the play transferred to New York Coyle won a New York Critics Theatre World Award for Outstanding Broadway Debut.
Now another decade on, Coyle's is receiving international recognition for his performance as Bates in Downton Abbey. The role was especially written for Coyle by series creator, Julian Fellows after he saw him in the 2004 BBC series North and South. "I knew he had the capacity to suggest a character's bitter and painful past without doing much to indicate it", says Fellows. The idea to make Bates lame, however, came from Fellows' wife, Emma Kitchener.
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At home in Norfolk, England.
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As for Coyle's marital status, the 47 year old is still footloose and fancy free, but not he hopes for long. As he told a reporter at the end of last year, "the right person, time and place just hasn't happened - yet. It's something I want. Through my 30s into my 40s, I've gone from one long-term relationship to another, so I've spent the last few years taking stock. I don't know if it's a good or bad thing, but only now am I truly ready for a relationship."
Let us know what you think of Brendan Coyle by dropping us a line.
To contact Heather:
E-mail: heather@mpt.org
Address: Afternoon Tea
Maryland Public Television
11767 Owings Mills Blvd.
Owings Mills, MD 21117
Week of January 23, 2012:
Joanne Froggatt
Continuing our look at the actors who appear in Downton Abbey, this week we feature head housemaid, Anna, played by one of England's leading young actresses, 30 year old Joanne Froggatt.
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As housemaid Anna
in Downton Abbey. |
Froggatt is a genuine Yorkshire lass having been born on August 23, 1980, in Scarborough where her father ran a confectioners business. At the age of four, her parents, who Froggatt lovingly describes as "freethinkers", sold up shop (literally!) to go "live off the land" on a 10 acre farm near Whitby. As Froggatt recalls "it was a lovely life, we'd make treehouses all day – and my parents worked from home. They've always gone their own way and they've always taught me and my brother [an antiques dealer four years older than Froggatt] to be open-minded and go for the things we want." The young Froggatt did exactly that.
Before she could barely start talking, Froggatt had asked for ballet lessons, and at 11 had joined a Scarborough drama society. It was there that she picked up an issue of The Stage magazine and saw ads for what seemed like paradise on earth – a stage school. Two years later, after much badgering and cajoling, she'd persuaded her parents to enroll her in the Berkshire theatre school, Redroofs.
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As single mom Zoe
in Coronation Street. |
By the age of 15, Froggatt had got her first television role – playing a teenage prostitute in the police drama The Bill. As Froggatt tells it, "I was so excited to be playing a proper part on TV. I called my parents and shouted down the phone, "I've got a job! I'm playing an underage prostitute." They went, "Erm, that's brilliant, darling. Well done!"
After leaving school when she was 17, Froggatt got a job at WH Smith book store while she continued to look for acting work. It didn't take long before Froggatt landed herself an 18 month contract with England's longest running nighttime soap opera, Coronation Street, playing teenage single mom, Zoe Tattersall.
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As Suzie in her debut film In Our Name.
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When her contract expired Froggatt didn't have long to wait before moving onto a string of television work, including Lorna Doone and A Touch of Frost. It was her starring role, five years later though, in Danielle Cable: Eyewitness that earned Froggatt a prestigious Royal Television Society best actress. Then came Downton Abbey.
To have landed a role in what has turned out to be the most successful period drama since Brideshead Revisited is a thrill beyond belief for the diminutive 5' 2" actress who is even far tinier in real life than she appears on our screens. The only complaint she has is the clothes she has to wear. It's not that she minds her head housemaid's limited wardrobe, it's just that most everyone else gets to be dressed in stunning Edwardian gowns, leaving Froggatt with what she calls "costume envy". So much so that while filming, Froggatt would joke with the script writers "can we not write a scene where Anna raids Lady Mary's wardrobe, or Lady Mary goes, 'Anna, just try what you want, just take it, honestly!'"
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Downton Abbey actresses Elizabeth
McGovern, Froggatt and Michelle Dockery at the Primetime Emmy Awards in 2011. |
Anna's housemaid uniform is glamorous compared to what she wore in her debut film role, In Our Name. As a soldier returning from a tour in Iraq with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Froggatt's character, Suzie, spends most of her time in Army fatigues.
As well as her desire to be clad in a beautiful frock once in a while, Froggatt is also hoping that she gets at some point to have a speaking scene with Dame Maggie Smith, who plays the Dowager Countess of Grantham. Now that's something for us to keep an eye out for as we enjoy the second series of Downton Abbey, airing Sunday nights at 9pm.
To contact Heather:
E-mail: heather@mpt.org
Address: Afternoon Tea
Maryland Public Television
11767 Owings Mills Blvd.
Owings Mills, MD 21117
Week of January 16, 2012:
Elizabeth McGovern
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Elizabeth McGovern as
Lady Cora. |
This week we continue celebrating the return of Downton Abbey, with a look at Elizabeth McGovern who plays Lady Cora in the series.
McGovern, who was nominated for an Oscar at the tender age of 20 for her role in Ragtime and who just prior, at the age of 19, had had a major role in Robert Redford's Oscar winning film Ordinary People, swapped Hollywood glamour for life in England in the early 1990s. There she and her British husband, Simon Curtis, who recently directed My Week With Marilyn, raised their two children, managing to stay out of the public eye as much as possible.
Now an unbelievable 50 years old, McGovern was born in Evanston, IL, but raised in north Hollywood, where she attended North Hollywood High School. With both her parents being educators - her father teaching law at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and her mother teaching high school English - McGovern was encouraged to shy away from the "Valley Girl" fever that seemed so popular among her peers. Instead "we always read stories aloud" says McGovern, crediting the family's love of books to her own love of acting.
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In the 1981 film Ragtime,
with Donald O'Connor. |
It was while acting in a school play, Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, that McGovern was seen by an agent who told her to call if she ever needed work. When McGovern moved to New York and needed money to attend Julliard, she called the agent who got her a "cattle call" for a new movie. The movie was Ordinary People. After filming was completed, McGovern went onto Julliard - now well above to afford the tuition - but left after a year when Milos Forman cast her in Ragtime. After that she made movie after movie with some of the biggest names in Hollywood. Sometimes, McGovern feels her being on the fast track to fame at such a young age was not an entirely good thing, wishing that she'd "had a chance to grow and develop as an actor in a little bit more of an anonymous fashion."
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With former fiancé actor Sean Penn.
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After breaking off her engagement to Sean Penn when she was 23, McGovern disappeared from the public eye. McGovern and Penn had met on the set of Racing The Moon. Penn, who was McGovern's first real boyfriend, was of a similar age, and was an equal match professionally. But that it seems is where the similarities ended. As McGovern tells it, "there's a drama to the way Sean lives every bit of his life. That's what he's all about. I'm not someone who breathes drama every minute of the day and he really, genuinely does - it's what he thrives on." Eventually McGovern found that being with Penn was simply "too exhausting." That and the fact that Penn preferred to live in Los Angeles, while McGovern's love of performing on stage meant she kept on having to go to New York.
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With husband director Simon
Curtis at the world premier of his film My Week With Marilyn. |
It was in Hollywood though that McGovern met her husband, whom she married in 1992. Curtis was a producer on Tales from Hollywood, a wartime drama which starred McGovern, alongside Jeremy Irons and Sir Alec Guinness. After McGovern became pregnant, the pair moved out of Hollywood to Chiswick, West London, where they still live today. Their eldest daughter, Matilda, is now 17, and their second child Gracie, 13. McGovern confesses that initially she "wasn't too ecstatic about being pregnant", in fact, she didn't really want children. She was also none too fond of the adjustments she had to make to life in England. Plus, with the exception of Curtis, McGovern, knew no one else in England. After the arrival of baby Matilda, McGovern finally began to feel settled.
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Elizabeth McGovern and Joanne Froggatt
prepare for a scene in Downton Abbey. |
Once McGovern returned to work, she quickly built up a successful career in film and television in Britain. When the role of Lady Cora in Downton Abbey came up McGovern wrote to the series' creator Julian Fellows, begging for the role. After putting her through the agonies of auditioning, Fellows cast McGovern and she is still pinching herself. Compared to working in Hollywood, McGovern finds that working on a British set a "breath of fresh air". The cast are "always laughing" says McGovern. "There was always someone at the elegant dining table who would ask the butler for a bottle of ketchup and send everyone into hysterics." Now that's certainly something to think about next time we see a dinner table scene in Downton Abbey, which you can see on Sundays at 9pm.
We'll look at another Downton actor next week. If you've got someone you'd like to see featured write and let us know.
To contact Heather:
E-mail: heather@mpt.org
Address: Afternoon Tea
Maryland Public Television
11767 Owings Mills Blvd.
Owings Mills, MD 21117
Week of January 9, 2012:
Hugh Bonneville
Greetings, Downton Abbey fans. This week we're going to take a look at Hugh Bonneville who plays Robert, Earl of Grantham in the series, a role that was specifically written with the actor in mind.
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Hugh Bonneville.
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Bonneville, who was born in Blackheath, south-east London in 1963 and educated at Sherborne School in Dorset, now lives in West Sussex with his wife, Lulu Williams and nine year old son, Felix. Like Bonneville's mother, who gave up her job as a nurse after he was born, Lulu is a full-time mother. It's a job that Bonneville is obviously overwhelming proud. "Lulu's priority has been to be a bedrock for Felix and me and I'm completely indebted to her," says Bonneville.
Bonneville's father was a surgeon and both parents, who are now in their 80s, continue to be "fantastic role models" to Bonneville. "They always put the needs of others before their own. They are truly remarkable people", says Bonneville of his parents.
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With wife Lulu and son Felix.
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The youngest of three children by six years, Bonneville always felt something of an "outsider", but writing his own plays to perform with friends was a huge comfort. He usually played the lead. In his teens, Bonneville auditioned for and was accepted into the UK's prestigious National Youth Theatre. Despite knowing at the back of his mind that he'd end up an actor, on leaving school Bonneville went to Corpus Christi College at the University of Cambridge, where he read Theology. Then it was on to the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London after which he made his professional debut in 1986 as an understudy to Ralph Fiennes' Lysander in A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park. The next year he joined the National Theatre where he stayed until in 1991 he became a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Bonneville's time at the RSC was, according to Bonneville, "probably the happiest I've been as an actor".
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In Notting Hill.
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When Bonneville's contract at the RSC wasn't renewed the young actor was devastated. "I thought I would never work again," he says. The world of film and television awaited and Bonneville made his feature film debut in 1994 in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The film was directed by Kenneth Branagh, with whom Bonneville had worked at the RSC, when he had played Laertes to Branagh's Hamlet. Since then, Bonneville has appeared in more than a dozen films, including Notting Hill and Mansfield Park.
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In Downton Abbey.
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It's Downton Abbey though that has made Hugh Bonneville a recognized name the world over. The actor believes the reason for the show's success is because of "the writing". That and the fact "the casting was immaculate". Bonneville also lauds the production quality. As he told a reporter from the Guardian newspaper "every department took such incredible care. I remember one of the props guys adjusting a fern on a centrepiece on the dinner table between takes. He wasn't happy with it. I remember watching him, even on the 10th take, still worrying away at it. I love that attention to detail. They spent thousands shooting the hunt scenes at the right time of year, to make sure there wouldn't be leaves on the trees because people would have written in to complain if there were."
As for the reason why the themes of the Edwardian drama have resonated so strongly, Bonneville feels that it is to do with the "fragile, uncertain, neurotic times" we live in. "Downton is a world of self-confidence as a nation. We want that, we miss it and yearn for it, without necessarily admiring the social structure. There is also something about glimpsing an era that you know is about to change but until then was an era of certainty". He also feels it has a lot to do with the characters. "You want to be in a room with them", says Bonneville. "That's not to say you necessarily like them, but you are interested in the way they interact with each other".
If there's a favorite actor in Downton Abbey that you'd enjoy being in a room with, write and let us know. Tell me how you're enjoying the second series of Downton, which airs Sunday nights at 9pm on MPT.
To contact Heather:
E-mail: heather@mpt.org
Address: Afternoon Tea
Maryland Public Television
11767 Owings Mills Blvd.
Owings Mills, MD 21117
Week of January 2, 2012:
Dame Maggie Smith
Happy New Year! There may be over 300 shopping days until next Christmas, but there's less than a week until the return of Downton Abbey, which returns to MPT Sunday, January 8th at 9pm. As promised, Dame Maggie Smith, who plays Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham in the series, is the subject of this week's chinwag.
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Maggie Smith.
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Smith, who celebrated her 77th birthday just last week on December 28, was born, Margaret Natalie Smith in Ilford, Essex, on December 28, 1934. Her father, Newcastle-upon-Tyne born Nathanial, was a pathologist. Her Scottish born mother, Margaret Hutton Little, was a secretary, and she had two older brothers, twins Ian and Alistair.
At the age of four, in the summer of 1939, under threat of severe bombing during World War II, the Smith family moved from London to Oxford, where Nathaniel found work at Oxford University. Later the young Maggie attended the Oxford High School for Girls, but realizing that an academic education was not for her, she left school at 16, and joined the Oxford Playhouse School. While there Smith not only got to appear on stage, but also took a turn back stage, working as assistant stage manager.
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As "Viola" in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.
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It was Oxford University though that provided Smith with her first "serious" stage debut, when she performed in the Oxford University Dramatic Society's production of Twelfth Night in 1952. Her London stage debut was in a revue called Oxford Accents at the New Watergate theatre. That same year, 1956, Smith made her Broadway debut - not in a play, but as a "singing-comedienne" in the New Faces '56 Revue at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.
After returning to London, Smith got regular acting work, appearing on stages all over the West End. It didn't take long before she was getting lead roles, and in 1963 Smith became a charter member of Laurence Olivier's new Royal National Theatre Company. Smith also expanded on her film career and played Richard Burton's love hungry Personal Assistant, Miss Mead, in The VIPs.
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In The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
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In 1965, Smith appeared as Desdemona to Olivier's Othello. The production was made into a film and Smith was nominated for an Academy Award. More films followed; The Honeypot in 1967, and Hot Millions in 1968, but Smith's true passion was theatre. It was while acting on stage that Smith met her first husband, Robert Stephens, who had appeared with her in several productions, including the Franco Zeffirelli directed Much Ado About Nothing and Noel Coward's Hay Fever. Given that Stephens was still married the couple's love affair caused a minor scandal, which escalated when Smith gave birth to their first child Christopher in June 1967. They married ten days after Christopher's birth and continued to appear together on stage and screen. After the arrival of second son, Toby, Smith cut down on her workload. She did not, however, cut back on the quality of the work she produced and in 1969, appeared as the lead in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which also starred her husband. That role gave Smith her first Oscar. Oh, What A Lovely War followed, then Travels with My Aunt in 1972 which garnered Smith another Oscar nomination.
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With first husband, Robert
Stephens, and children. |
It was then that Smith's seemingly perfect life began to crumble. Troubled by Smith's career success and Stephen's alcoholism and bouts of depression, while touring the U.S. in a production of Noel Coward's Private Lives, directed by John Gielgud, the marriage fell apart. Eventually Stephens left the tour and the marriage was over. That was in 1974. A year later, Smith would find love again with an old flame, playwright Beverley Cross. The couple had first become romantically involved in the early 1950s, when they had been engaged, but had separated in the mid-60s after Smith met Stephens. The couple married on June 23, 1975.
In 1978, Smith won a second Oscar for her portrayal of Diana Barrie in the Neal Simon comedy California Suite and two more Oscar nominations followed during the 1980s. The first for her portrayal of Charlotte Bartlett in A Room With a View and as Constance, Countess of Trentham in the costume drama Gosford Park.
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With second husband
Beverley Cross. |
The 1990s were not so cheery. In 1998, Cross died from an aneurysm. He was 66. Smith who regarded Cross as her "rock" continues to grieve his passing, once telling a reporter, "I still miss him so much it's ridiculous. People say it gets better but it doesn't. It just gets different, that's all. Even in my dream I kept saying to him, 'You are dead. You can't be here'."
Throwing herself into her work, Smith became a familiar face to fans of the Harry Potter films, with her portrayal of Professor Minerva McGonagall. Smith and Robbie Coltrane, who played Hagrid, are said to be the only actors in the films personally cast by author JK Rowling. It was while working on the sixth Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, in 2008 that Smith had found a lump on her breast.
As Smith tells it, "I had been feeling a little rum and didn't know why. I was never nervous, well I was, but I didn't think it was anything serious because years ago I felt one before and had been hurled into hospital. It was benign and assumed this one would be too. It was a bit unnerving when it wasn't. But treatment is so swift you don't have time to think about anything."
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As Professor Minerva
McGonagall in Harry Potter. |
Smith continued to film Harry Potter mid-treatment. "I was hairless. At least I had no problem getting the wig on! I was like a boiled egg". Smith was not so jocular in her recollection about the chemotherapy treatment. "It was very peculiar, something that makes you feel much worse than the cancer itself, a very nasty thing. I used to go to treatment on my own, and nearly everybody else was with somebody. I wouldn't have liked that. Why would you want to make anybody sit in those places? Oh, it's awful. You really do feel horribly sick. I was staggering around [the supermarket] and felt ghastly. I was holding on to railings, thinking, 'I can't do this'."
She did do it though, and continues to act. The prospect of doing stage work, however, frightens her. "I feel a great lack of confidence", Smith told a reporter last year. "Being unwell and having withdrawn...I haven't been in London for so long, it's quite scary up here." Fortunately for us Smith's bout of stage fright has not extended itself to films and television and we can look forward to seeing her this coming weekend in series two of Masterpiece's Downton Abbey.
To contact Heather:
E-mail: heather@mpt.org
Address: Afternoon Tea
Maryland Public Television
11767 Owings Mills Blvd.
Owings Mills, MD 21117
Week of December 26, 2011:
Downton Abbey, Season II-coming in January!
Let the countdown begin! Not just to welcoming in a New Year, but to the return of Downton Abbey, which returns January 8th.
If you somehow missed season one of what is the most successful British costume drama since Brideshead Revisited, here's a brief synopsis:
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An interior shot of Highclere Castle, aka Downton Abbey.
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The series is set in the fictional Downton Abbey, the Yorkshire country house of the Earl and Countess of Grantham. The series commenced with news of the sinking of the Titanic. That event signified many changes afoot at Downton; along with the introduction of electric lights and a telephone, a crisis of inheritance threatens to displace the resident Crawley family, in spite of the best efforts of the noble and compassionate Earl, Robert Crawley; his American heiress wife, Cora; his mother, and his eldest daughter, Mary.
Reluctantly, the family is forced to welcome its heir apparent, the self-made and proudly modern Matthew Crawley, himself none too happy about the new arrangements. As Matthew's bristly relationship with Mary begins to crackle with electricity, hope for the future of Downton's dynasty takes shape. But when petty jealousies and ambitions grow among the family and the staff, scheming and secrets threaten to derail the scramble to preserve Downton Abbey.
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Highclere Castle.
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While Downton Abbey is fictional, the location where the filming of the series took place is most definitely real. Highclere Castle in Hampshire was used not just for the exterior shots of the series, but also for the majority of the interior filming.
Home to the Carnarvon family since 1679 Highclere was built on an ancient site, and the original house was recorded in the Domesday Book. The Castle's history also includes a connection dating back even further. The 5th Earl of Highclere was Howard Carter, the man who discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings in 1922. An exhibition featuring a number of rare antiquities from the 5th Earl's earlier Egyptian excavations is housed at Highclere. The outdoor scenes in Downton Abbey were filmed in the village of Bampton, Oxfordshire.
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Dame Maggie Smith,
Downton Abbey matriarch. |
Heading up the cast of Downton Abbey is Dame Maggie Smith, who plays Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham. As Robert, Earl of Grantham's mother, Violet is keenly loyal to her son. Her American daughter-in-law, however, is treated with disdain. The role of Cora is played by Elizabeth McGovern, who is no stranger to PBS, having appeared in David Copperfield, Memento Mori, All for Love and All the King's Men.
We'll be chatting a lot more about Dame Maggie next week. Until then, TTFN!
To contact Heather:
E-mail: heather@mpt.org
Address: Afternoon Tea
Maryland Public Television
11767 Owings Mills Blvd.
Owings Mills, MD 21117
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