One of the creators of “Upstairs Downstairs” says the wave of fox-and-hound soap operas that her show inspired is now “overdone” and nothing more than TV “snobbery.”
Dame Eileen Atkins, who came up with the idea for “Upstairs” with fellow actress Jean Marsh in the early 1970s, believes the period dramas like “Downton Abbey” have to stop.
“There’s too much of it on television,” Atkins, 78, told a London newspaper over the weekend.
“I’d rather they stop doing endless Dickens or Jane Austen,” she said.
“People feel comfortable with that, because they think, ‘Oh, I’m going to get a bit of culture now,’ and, also, it’s very palatable.
“There’s, actually, a lot of snobbery going on,” she believes.
Unlike Marsh, who played the housekeeper Rose in “Upstairs,” Atkins never appeared in the series she helped create because she had scheduling conflicts.
She was set to play in the remake last year but dropped out, reportedly because she didn’t like the way the script was handled.