Stairway to Success

Chris Hallam celebrates the acting and writing talents of Upstairs, Downstairs co-creator Jean Marsh

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Jean Marsh was on holiday in the south of France when she came up with the idea which would completely transform her life. Jean was with her friend, Eileen Atkins. Both were actresses in their 30s and were house-sitting for a well-to-do mutual friend. “I'd love more of this,” Jean reflected, as she relaxed luxuriously by the pool. “Then write down the idea!” Eileen replied. Jean’s idea had been simple. It was the late 1960s and Jean had been struck by the recent enormous success of the 1967 adaptation of John Galsworthy’s The Forsyte Saga. “It was beautiful, of course,” Jean reflected later. “The clothes, the houses... but we thought... who is cooking the food and ironing the clothes? At the time, apart from Dickens, there was nothing written about the working classes. And I was determined to be the maid and not the lady.”

The two actresses originally envisaged a comedy series entitled Behind the Green Baize Door in which they would play two Victorian housemaids. The idea evolved. The comedy element was dropped, the name changed, and the setting moved forward in time, starting in the Edwardian era of 1903, a time then still well within living memory for older viewers. Importantly, an “upstairs” family, the Bellamys of 165 Eaton Place, Belgravia, central London were also introduced. As Jean observed: “Servants have to serve somebody.”

The result, Upstairs, Downstairs first went out in October 1971. ITV franchise London Weekend Television initially showed little confidence in the new series, sneaking it out in a graveyard slot of 10pm on Sundays. “They'll switch off in their thousands,” predicted Cyril Bennett, LWT’s head of drama. “It’s very pretty, but it’s just not commercial television.”