I say, no oyster fork? One is simply letting the side down!
All the best ideas happen by accident. Presenter Giles Coren only wanted to land a second series of his time- travelling food show, exploring the British diet of past decades, but he’s invented a whole new drama genre.
Welcome to Downmarket Abbey, a tale across the class divide — the twin struggle of middle-class snobs desperate to impress the local bigwigs, and Debbie, the waif far from home who must slave in their kitchen and scrub their floors. Further Back In Time For Dinner (BBC2) sees the return of the Robshaw family, whose own home reverted to its 1960s and 1970s decor in the first series. this time, they are in a specially adapted house in tooting, South london, with stuffed birds and half of Kew Gardens crammed into their living room.
Dad Brandon is wearing a bowler and sideburns, while wife Rochelle and their two teenage daughters, Miranda and Ros, are squeezed into corsets. It’s 1900, which means they are living in the most socially competitive era in British history.
‘this is benignly stressful,’ gasps Rochelle as she serves high tea with sandwiches and Battenburg cake to another party of total strangers, here to inspect her furnishings — a common pastime for middle- class climbers in late Victorian Britain.
even laying the table is cause for social anxiety. ‘they’re gonna think we’re really common if we don’t have an oyster fork,’ Rochelle frets.
But if it’s hard for the ladies of the house, it’s worse for the skivvy. Maid- of-all-works Debbie is only 19, just out of catering college in real life. If she thought modern restaurant kitchens were tough, domestic service at the start of the 20th century is near slavery.
With no electrics or fridge, she’s expected to serve eight-course dinners, including fancy starters such as mock turtle soup (made from the flesh of a calf’s head).
Debbie is an instant star. this could run for five series and we won’t tire of the girl. even when the Robshaws order her to prepare a dinner party at 12 hours’ notice, and send in a hired butler to bully her, she never loses her composure.
‘I’m a bit hot,’ she confesses, as she battles the devilled kidneys and chicken in quail jelly, ‘but I’m trying not to think about that.’
But though her family is 200 miles away in Yorkshire, she’s not all alone. the ageless Cockney pop stars Chas and Dave drop by to check on her, after a quick medley of music hall songs. ‘Do they look after yer, Debbie?’ they ask. ‘they don’t beat yer or nuffink?’
the main flaw with this concept is that, like Downton Abbey, the years pass too quickly. By the end of an hour, we’ve already leapt forward a decade. Next week it’s the Suffragette era, and no doubt Debbie will be chaining herself to railings and demanding the vote.
No genres were being reinvented in Case ( C4). this is straightforward Scandi crime drama, menacing and dark as a winter forest, which starts as they always do with the death of a teenage girl — a ballet student found hanged after a party in a deserted theatre.
Case is made in Iceland, from the same director as the superb trapped (shown on BBC4 last year) and featuring ten of the same cast. But though it is entirely in Icelandic with subtitles, the acting feels subtly different, as though it were partly improvised.
like all Scandi-noir, it’s slow- moving, but here the actors sometimes look as though they’re frantically trying to think of what to say next.
Despite this, the plot surged forward, and by the end of the first hour a satisfyingly complex story had emerged. the dead girl’s real parents were drunks, who had seen their baby daughter handed to a wealthy couple by corrupt social services.
And, hired by a venal reporter, a duo of drugged- up hacker vigilantes were digging into the secret past lives of the adoptive parents.
I’m hooked. the rest of this nine-part thriller won’t be shown on tV, but it is available as a free box set online, as part of C4’s Walter Presents project. One to binge on.