Downton’s Fellowes: Since I hit 70 my opinions are disregarded
Belgravia, Episode 1
JULIAN FELLOWES believes his opinions were “automatically discounted” when he turned 70 and that dismissing the views of older people is a mistake.
The writer of Downton Abbey and forthcoming ITV period drama Belgravia has felt his cultural relevance fade with age.
Fellowes, famed for recreating the mores of historical high-society, said he has seen his opinions met with tolerance instead of interest since his 70th birthday. The dramatist is defiant in his belief that writing people off does not make sense, given all that those aged over 70 have to offer.
Belgravia follows families navigating the constraining social norms of 19th-century London, which have since been abandoned.
Fellowes believes his views and pronouncements will also simply pass into history. The writer told journalists during afternoon tea in London: “There is a moment in your life when your opinions are automatically discounted because they are conditioned by a different age. There may be no hostility there; I’m not feeling a wounded victim.
“Simply the idea that it is impossible to remain relevant beyond a certain number of years. Obviously, I don’t agree with that, because I’m in it.
“But you are aware that there is a kind of benevolent tolerance of what you’re thinking or you’re saying. I’m sure that was true in 1560, but in that period it was probably when you were aged 50.”
He added: “Some people go on thinking and saying things I’m interested in long after [they turn] 70. It isn’t a cultural opinion that makes sense.”
Societal differences provide tension in Belgravia, which is based on a book by Fellowes. It follows the nouveauriche Trenchard family, led by Tamsin Greig and Philip Glenister, as they deal with a family secret in a socially unforgiving age.
The drama is fronted by strong female characters, and the 70-year-old Fellowes believes this female strength is nothing new. He said: “I think I’m a feminist in any meaningful sense. I cannot think of a way in which I’m not a feminist. I’ve always lived my life among very strong women.
“They don’t frighten me, they give me a sense of security.”
Fellowes added that it would still be wrong to present women in period dramas as rebels, because they often actually feared being “outcasts”.
ITV ★★★★★
‘Belgravia is not Downton Abbey,” I was told, firmly, before being shown the first episode of Julian Fellowes’s latest television drama. Is that true? Well, yes and no. The era is different – early Victorian, rather than early 20th century. The setting has changed – the gleaming new London district of Belgravia, the “spangled city for the rich” where the great and the good of society have all flocked, rather than a country pile.
But there are grand dames, even grander frocks, surly-but-decent butlers and lashings of Fellowes’s obsession with class. Squint and it could be Downton.
Is it as good? On first inspection, not quite. It hasn’t got Downton’s warmth. Didn’t we truly care about that old stately home? Indeed, we almost felt part of it. Belgravia lacks that heart, though it has Downton’s pedigree stamped all over it.
Based on Fellowes’s novel of the same name, it begins in Brussels in 1815 on the eve of the Battle of Quatre Bras, the first skirmish of Waterloo. The historical morsel that Fellowes could not resist is the Duchess of Richmond’s ball, which counted among its guests the Duke of Wellington and most of his top brass, as well as a great deal of English society. Uniformed soldiers dropping their napkins and kissing their wives goodbye, before riding off to a battle from which many would not return…
It’s an arresting way to start a series and those early shots of 19th-century Brussels and cobbled Belgian streets thronged with His Majesty’s soldiers help to sweep away the cobwebs of Downton’s dusty, dimly lit corridors.
Invited to the ball are the socialclimbing Mr and Mrs James Trenchard (Philip Glenister and Tamsin Greig), he Wellington’s victualler, she a schoolmaster’s daughter, along with their daughter who flirts openly with her secret boyfriend, Lord Bellasis, an officer serving under Wellington and the son of the aristocratic Lord and Lady Brockenhurst (Tom Wilkinson and Harriet Walter). “At least,” says Mrs Trenchard as the men gallop off to war, “no one will remember their folly and indiscretion.”
Yes, Downton wasn’t subtly scripted either – no great problem for a Sundaynight mille-feuille – and the folly and indiscretion of the young lovers forms the backbone of the series, as we leap 29 years into the future, to the exciting new-build that is Belgravia, where the Trenchards have become the Victorian nouveau riche, complete with gaudy furnishings, an entitled dolt of a son and a basement full of two-faced servants (fear not, Fellowes does not neglect his downstairs here).
The cast is strong, though it is Greig and Walter who hold the screen and pull you into the story, so much more than the vainglorious and self-serving men. Both women are defined by grief. The eyebrow-acting and lip-pursing is top drawer.
As with Downton, Fellowes packs the piece with real-life nuggets, turning parts of it into a Horrible Histories for grown-ups. Most of it is elegantly handled, and all part of Fellowes’s charm, with only one dropped-anvil of a speech about the Cubitt Brothers, who built Belgravia in the first half of the 19th century, crunching out of the driveway in the wrong gear.
So, it’s not Downton Abbey. It feels too much of a satisfying, selfcontained story to run for 52 episodes. But it’s fun, frothy and fabulous looking and, just by coincidence, will fill that Downton-shaped hole on a Sunday night very nicely.
Belgravia begins on Sunday on ITV at 9pm