Entertainment

Remaking ‘Upstairs Downstairs’

THAT classic of high-brow PBS soap operas, “Upstairs Downstairs,” is being remade.

Filming on a new version of the 1970s series begins in Britian sometime next year but won’t hit US TV until 2011, according to reports over the weekend.

The saga of the fictional Bellamy family house — where the upper crust ate and played on the top floors and the servants dwelled down below — was originally set in the early part of the last century, from the end of Queen Victoria’s reign through World War I and up to the Great Depression.

The new version will be set in 1936, according to reports.

“The house itself remains the central character,” the screenwriter Heidi Thomas told a London newspaper. “It’s very, very close to the corridors of power.

“In the original series, . . . King Edward VII came to dinner. We’re going to have politicians and royalty passing through the house.”

Jean Marsh, who co-created the show nearly 40 years ago, will return as Rose — who is no longer a maid, but the head housekeeper in the new version.

The original was shown in over 70 countries, including the US, where it was for years the most popular thing on public TV, with the exception perhaps of “Sesame Street.”

It gave the American audience its first taste of British, class-based society and Edwardian style.

For years, Hollywood has been trying to turn the concept of “Upstairs Downstairs” into an American show.

Jack Webb, the star of “Dragnet” and a prolific TV producer, wanted Marsh to move the show to LA and set it at an employment agency — an idea that thankfully never came off.