Ellen Gray: 'Upstairs Downstairs' returns, updated

MASTERPIECE: UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS. 9 p.m. Sunday, WHYY 12.

PASADENA, CALIF. - Good news for anyone who remembers watching "Upstairs, Downstairs" thirtysome years ago on public TV:

You may not be as old as your birth certificate indicates.

Because as the British series returns to the U.S. Sunday on PBS' "Masterpiece," only six years have passed since the day in 1930 when the last of the Bellamys and their servants vacated 165 Eaton Place, and yet Jean Marsh, who last starred as Rose 35 years ago, is still very much Rose.

Believably so.

"Thank you very much," Marsh said in January when this somewhat astonishing fact was brought to her attention following a PBS news conference.

"But the problem was when we were talking about it, I said, 'I'll need some help. You know, because it's 35 years, not six years.'

"And they said, 'Oh, yes, everything will be easy and wonderful and you look good,' and then it's on HD, which is so ferocious. I wasn't allowed to wear real makeup and the lighting was ferocious. And I looked and I thought, 'Oh, they'll all think that I'm 120,' " she said, laughing.

Not likely. Bone structure helps. And, Marsh acknowledges, "my weight hasn't changed. That's the beginning.

"Sometimes when people talk about it and they say, 'How old . . . ?' I say, 'Don't go there.' Because we didn't age in the first 'Upstairs, Downstairs,' " she said, even though it covered a period between 1903 and 1930.

"We didn't know it was going to keep going on and nobody aged. And in fact, when it finished, I looked younger, because my skirts were shorter and I had a '20s bob, which of course is more flattering than a bun."

The only holdover beyond a street address from the original series - which Marsh created with actress Eileen Atkins - Rose finds herself back in London in 1936, running a small domestic-employment agency after having spent a few years away caring for a sick aunt.

The update by Heidi Thomas ("Cranford") has lost the comma in its title and acquired a whole new set of characters, including Eaton Place's new owners, Lady Agnes (Keeley Hawes) and her diplomat husband, Sir Hallam Holland (Ed Stoppard), who'll be needing Rose's help to staff the house.

It's also made a place for Atkins ("Cranford") as Sir Hallam's mother, Maude. (Atkins, who'd envisioned herself as a maid, along with Marsh's Rose, when they first proposed the original, was working elsewhere when the show eventually got under way.)

Viewers who've never seen the original, which was re-released on DVD last week in a 40th anniversary edition, might see parallels to Julian Fellowes' recent "Masterpiece" miniseries, "Downton Abbey," and to Robert Altman's "Gosford Park," which Fellowes also wrote.

Atkins doesn't seem to mind, telling reporters that when Altman first approached playwright Tom Stoppard - who also happens to be Ed Stoppard's father - with the idea for an " 'Upstairs Downstairs' meets Agatha Christie" film, Stoppard had recommended he talk to Atkins and Marsh.

The pair, Atkins said, were "very nervous about it. I hate flying, and Robert Altman would say, 'Come and talk to me in Texas.' And I'd say, 'I don't want to get on a plane,' and we were very tentative, nervous about it, and we were both busy. We sort of, in the end, turned him down. . . . We did a treatment and he didn't like it. And then he asked Julian. So fair [enough]. We hadn't really wanted to do it. So he asked Julian, and then 'Gosford Park' happened," and Atkins signed on to play the cook.

As for "Downton Abbey," "in the music hall, you have a warm-up act, and then you have the start-in. I feel that 'Downton' has been a fantastic warm-up act," Atkins said.

Both series have been hits in Britain, where the BBC is already planning a second season of "Upstairs Downstairs" (and ITV, which produced the original "Upstairs," is planning more episodes of "Downton Abbey").

The original "Upstairs, Downstairs," by the way, wasn't part of "Masterpiece Theater," because, according to current executive producer Rebecca Eaton, "it was considered a soap opera and not based on a classic."

Classic or not, the three episodes that launch Sunday manage to hit some of the same notes from the show's very first season - which I've been rewatching on DVD - while conveying a far more modern sensibility.

"You don't shoot in sepia, do you? If you're shooting it with modern machinery, you must have what we do today," Marsh said. "There must be a different energy. And there is a different energy than was in the '70s."

Though she'd worried about returning to the role after so many years, "I was swept along by Rose," she said.

"There was one moment, on the second day of filming, when Rose and I fused and I thought, I'm not going to worry about this. This is fine, I've moved, Rose has moved." *

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