Masterpiece Theatre Memories

We fell in love, my mother immediately, me gradually and initially somewhat reluctantly— with the British-PBS (Boston’s WGBH-TV) cross pollination that became known as Masterpiece Theatre, including its appropriately majestic— and French— opening theme, Jean-Joseph Moret’s “Rondeau”, and the series’ elegant, elderly host Alistair Cooke, as well.

Nothing at all against the capable Russell Baker, the American writer-journalist who took over the hosting duties and presided for a dozen years when Cooke retired from the series in 1992, but for us the wry, magisterial Alistair Cooke in his English drawing room chair personified Masterpiece Theatre. (And I can’t resist mentioning here that Mom was thoroughly charmed by the sweetly silly Sesame Street send-up, Monsterpiece Theatre, featuring one “Alistair Cookie.”)

Closet romantic that I am, I always preferred Masterpiece Theatre’s costume and historical epics, a genre the Brits seem to produce with impeccable ease. The standouts were Lillie starring the cool, beautiful Francesca Annis as the Edwardian “Professional Beauty” Lillie Langtry and featuring Peter Egan, quite wonderful as her ardent friend and champion, the witty—and doomed—Oscar Wilde; Elizabeth R, with the commanding and customarily brilliant Glenda Jackson in the title role; and Therese Raquin, starring a spellbinding Kate Nelligan as the ruined heroine of Emile Zola’s psychological horror story of passion and Gothic revenge.

I also enjoyed every minute of the Masterpiece 1996 production of The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders. The sensual, curvaceous Alex Kingston—like her countrywoman Glenda Jackson not conventionally lovely, but blessed with strong, striking features—was letter perfect as the desperate and determined 18th century adventuress. Some critics found Kingston’s periodic asides to the camera/audience distracting, but so compelling is she as Dafoe’s bawdy anti-heroine that, for me, the device really worked. Kingston was also terrific on ER as the talented surgeon and unapologetic flirt—loved that tony Brit accent, didn’t you?—Dr. Elizabeth Corday, back in the days when ER was still appointment television.

Oh, and speaking of ER, can I just quickly get something out of the way?

There is only one Dr. “McDreamy” and that was/is bad boy Doug Ross aka George Clooney. Okay? I am willing to make allowances for those of you old enough to remember fondly the young (and closeted) Richard Chamberlain as Dr. Kildare—he was, in his day, pretty darn hunky. But the modern “McDreamy” is and always will be ER pediatrician Dr. Doug, so enough already about Patrick Whatshisname.

Thank you.

So what were your Masterpiece Theatre favorites? The music, the production values, the actors, the accents— surely over the years you’ve been captivated by something from this wonderful anthology series, which also offered a number of non-costume dramas, by the way, like the dark political satire House of Cards, starring a reptilian Ian Richardson, and in time included American works by James Agee, Willa Cather and Langston Hughes (whose Cora Unashamed kicked off MT’s “American Collection” in 2000).

I can tell you there seemed to be a Masterpiece Theatre for every member of my family. Brother Joe, whose television preferences seemed strictly limited to live sports, Star Trek (the Shatner-Nimoy-Kelley original) and Doctor Who (the Tom Baker period, preferably), never missed a single episode of I, Claudius, riveted by the malignant lunacy of John Hurt’s Caligula, the scheming cruelty of Sian Phillips’s Livia, and Derek Jacobi’s wretched, twitching, cunning Claudius, the ultimate political survivor.

Even my Gunsmoke and S.W.A.T.-loving Grandma found her Masterpiece favorites, first in the irresistibly addictive Upstairs, Downstairs, easily the most celebrated of the MT offerings, the superior British soap opera that chronicled the fortunes, setbacks, scandals and celebrations of the wealthy Bellamy family and their household staff; and later in the suspenseful Danger UXB, this one right up her tough-men-in-jeopardy alley, a bleak and gritty account of the unforgiving hazards faced by a British bomb disposal unit during the terrifying days and nights of the London Blitz.

Danger UXB starred Anthony Andrews of Brideshead Revisited fame, the classy 1981 PBS series based on the Evelyn Waugh novel (this one a Great Performances rather than Masterpiece Theatre production); you may recall his Brideshead co-star was none other than Jeremy Irons, another Masterpiece alum (The Pallisers; Love for Lydia) and Oscar-winning movie star.

My mom, to this day an MT fan, was the one who over the years embraced most of its numerous offerings— from The Six Wives of Henry VIII to Shoulder to Shoulder to The Jewel in the Crown to Jeeves & Wooster to the Prime Suspect series and many more in between— beginning with the 1969 forerunner The Forsyte Saga, the very first British serial broadcast in the U.S. That show, a black and white dramatization of the books of John Galsworthy, was such a hit with American audiences—who up to that point had never seen anything quite like it—that its success rescued the struggling PBS and made the omnibus Masterpiece Theatre not only possible but necessary.