There's a Small Hotel

By Paul Gray

Appearances to the contrary, Upstairs, Downstairs Producer John Hawkes-worth has not settled down in my lady's parlor. True, his new 15-part Masterpiece Theater presentation, a joint venture of the BBC and TIME-LIFE Television, has several things in common with its award-winning and much-beloved predecessor. Chief among these are intelligence and taste. The series is as handsomely produced, the Edwardian settings and costumes as lush and authentic, as any devotee of 165 Eaton Place could possibly wish. But Louisa Leyton, the heroine of The Duchess of Duke Street, would never pass muster with Hudson or Mrs. Bridges. She is impertinent, aggressive, and, worst of all, neither keeps her peace nor knows her place.

Louisa's story is modeled on the real-life exploits of Rosa Lewis (1867-1952), a legendary Londoner who started her career as a Cockney skivvy, became for a time a mistress to the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII), and wound up as the proprietor of the Cavendish Hotel, a slightly raffish establishment catering to the upper crust. Successes like Rosa's require bullheadedness and a certain animal cunning, qualities that Actress Gemma Jones mimes impressively. Her Louisa is a furious wren, an unbreakable China doll with a chin shaped like an eggshell and hard as a rock. "I just wanna be the best cook in England," she decides early and proceeds to bowl over the world that stands in her way. "What the bleedin' 'ell?" she hollers in florid Cockney when things go wrong. Pity the nobleman who tries to seduce her. "Push off," Louisa ripostes.

The first several episodes launch this redheaded terror on an unsuspecting world. Louisa learns to cook at a grand London house and attracts the attention of the Prince of Wales. Naturally, she must marry someone else immediately. "The prince would never seek to compromise a single lady," explains the royal equerry. Louisa rails at this "conspeyeracy" but bows to sovereign fate and marries Mr. Trotter, the butler (played by Donald Burton with just the right hint of smarminess). The prince sets them up in a London house designed for discreet visits. In quick succession, Victoria dies, the new King finds that he must bow to propriety and stop going out nights, Trotter turns to drink. Louisa buys the Bentinck, a hotel going out at the seams, and returns to the kitchen.

After these high, fast steps, The Duchess of Duke Street hits its stride. The hotel provides a center for succeeding episodes, and a staff of regular characters assembles. There is Mary (Victoria Plucknett), Louisa's adoring assistant, and Major Smith-Barton (Richard Vernon), a guest at the hotel who becomes his landlady's sidekick and confidant. Comic relief appears with Merriman (John Welsh), a teetering old headwaiter, and Starr (John Cater), the imperturbable hall porter. Asked by Louisa during his job interview whether he fought in the Boer War, Starr gazes at her evenly and pauses. "Very possibly," he finally answers. Christopher Cazenove lends his Arrow-shirt ad good looks as Charlie Tyrrell, alternately Louisa's benefactor, lover and friend.

What follows at this not-so-grand hotel covers most of the seven deadly sins. Despite its emphasis on tight plotting and revolving guests, the series does not scrimp on atmosphere or the incidental grace notes that so enriched Upstairs, Downstairs. The supply of gifted British character actors seems as inexhaustible as ever. John Rapley does several small but exquisitely understated turns as Louisa's fond, henpecked father; his face looks like a suet pudding garnished with two cocktail onions and a stray mustache. The sets are lavish collages of deep textures and polished surfaces, and the outdoor locations seem almost too spacious for the limited confines of the television screen. When Louisa goes marketing, she walks by an assemblage of what appears to be every vegetable in England. The gargantuan Edwardian meals that she prepares are photographed with almost sinful clarity (six of the episodes required the services of a cookery adviser). What Upstairs, Downstairs did for class consciousness, The Duchess of Duke Street may do for icebox raiding.

If so, the series' success will register later on millions of bathroom scales. Earlier indexes are available. The first episode drew a bigger audience than the debut of I, Claudius, a PBS hit last winter. Producer Hawkes-worth, who knew Rosa Lewis, says he is "happy that Americans enjoy her story, because she adored Americans. Reckoned they were all millionaires." She was wrong, but her eye, as always, rested squarely on the main chance. Rosa would have done very well in the U.S., and, with her hotel booked through next January, so should Louisa Leyton. -- Paul Gray

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