#phyllis logan

[such-g00d-luck]

you know it hits hard

[thatwasntaquestion]

All Creatures Great And Small - Downton Abbey Siegfried Farnon (Veterinarian) & Audrey Hall (Housekeeper) Charles Carson (Butler) & Elsie Hughes (Housekeeper)

[emcgoverns]

elizabeth mcgovern (with phyllis logan, sophie mcshera, michelle dockery, lesley nicol, raquel cassidy, laura carmichael, joanne froggatt, and lily james) for harper’s bazaar uk (august 2014 issue) | 📸: alexi lubormirski

happy international women’s day ♥️

[haveyouseenthisseries-poll]

[evviejo]

thirteen’s era appreciation: 192/?

[vintagetvstars]

Deidre Hall Vs. Phyllis Logan

Propaganda

Deidre Hall - (Electra Woman & Dyna Girl, Days of Our Lives) - No text propaganda

Phyllis Logan - (Lovejoy, Play for Today, And a Nightingale Sang) - Phyllis Logan starred in a number of TV plays on British TV in the 1980s and 1990s but her best known lead role from the era was as Lady Jane Felsham, opposite Ian McShane as Lovejoy an antiques dealer. Her performance in the TV film And a Nightingale Sang as Helen was poignant and moving but Phyllis herself was radiant. Just look those blue eyes and captivating smile!

Master Poll List of the Hot Vintage TV Ladies Bracket

Additional propaganda below the cut

Phyllis Logan:

[heartsandminds4flora]

Wishing a bright Happy Birthday to our beautiful Phyllis Logan, aka Flora Elderflower! Here’s hoping she’ll find some time to celebrate in style!

[downton-bridgerton]

@magiciansean: Ran into my good friend @bonhughbon and some of the cast of Downton Abbey . What a pleasure to perform for you all :) (x)

[mysteriousscottishdragon]

The 267th Annual Banquet in celebration of St. Andrew’s Day was held on Friday, November 17, 2023. New York’s original Scottish evening celebrated the best of Scotland with honored guests from far and wide.

The presentation of the Mark Twain Award, fondly referred to as the “Sammy,” was made to our Honoree, internationally acclaimed actor, Phyllis Logan.

Here’s the link to the gallery.

https://standrewsny.org/gallery/ViewAlbum.aspx?id=&album=&group=&index=0&p=0

[papa-evershed]

THOMAS BARROW | DOWNTON ABBEY: A NEW ERA

spoiler alert: he’s very fortunate.

[rosalyn51]

How realistic is Downton Abbey?

British Heritage Travel, March 27, 2023

The period mellow drama has fans around the world but today we ask just how realistic is Downton Abbey?

From Boston to Brisbane, Downton Abbey has fans around the globe. The sweeping period drama chronicles the historical events and early 20th-century lives of the residents of stately Downton Abbey, home to the Crawleys - the Earl of Grantham and his family - and all who ebb and flow in its umbra.

Drawing on the upstairs/downstairs tradition of Upstairs, Downstairs, the structure itself is a popular, proven series format. With almost three-dozen characters living at Downton, the viewer is expected to follow and care for, there’s someone or several with whom anyone can identify.

The lavish production of the Edwardian nobility’s elegant world is both dizzying and dazzling. Upstairs, this world is governed by the conventions of the aristocracy as much as by the hierarchical order radiating from the Earl of Grantham, his mother, the Dowager Countess, and his American-born wife, Cora. Downstairs, the pecking order is even more rigid, with the butler, Mr. Carson, and the housekeeper, Mrs. Hughes, unassailable at the top of the social pyramid.

There are few grays in the Downton Abbey world. Right, wrong, done, and not done are clearly known by all. Much-applauded author Julian Fellowes has made sure that we know black from white in this world as well. There are the good guys and girls and there are the villains. We can’t understand how everyone from scullery maid Daisy to Lady Grantham fails to see that footman Thomas and Lady’s maid O’Brien are a bad lot all around. Among the questions I have been asked most about Downton Abbey is how accurately the series depicts Edwardian and post-Edwardian life in an aristocratic home such as Downton. Are we getting the real picture?

How truthful is Downton Abbey?

In most respects, very. The one element that does not ring true is the easy interaction and conversation between the upstairs world of the family and their peers and the downstairs world of the hired help. That just didn’t happen (or at least not on such a scale). Most of the family wouldn’t have even known a housemaid’s name. These great country homes had back stairways for a reason. There’s not going to have been much interaction between these social sets, let alone much of an emotional connection. Of course, it always takes some element of the improbable to make a story a story instead of a dull narrative.

Downton Abbey is inexplicably situated in distant Yorkshire (probably to avoid having to weave London life into the tale). In “real life,” the series is shot at Highclere Castle, near the Berkshire market town of Newbury - about 65 miles west of London. What was originally, and probably more accurately, named Highclere House, the “castle” has been the ancestral home of the Earls of Carnarvon for more than 300 years. Its present residents are the youngish 8th Earl and Countess of Carnarvon.

Vising the real Downton Abbey

With unknown crowds of others, I went to see Highclere Castle this spring - just to catch the buzz and a few pictures. While Highclere Castle is open to the public regularly only from July through mid-September, they do open for a two-week spring season at Easter. The weather was generally gray and wet on the April Friday I was there, but the place was mobbed and the sun broke out. Most folks were there to visit Downton Abbey. In fact, a huge marquee had been erected on the back lawn to serve as an auxiliary tearoom to the regular café located downstairs in the old housekeeper’s suite.

No, somehow the crowds didn’t dampen the experience at all. I wandered the grounds and gardens, where folk were picnicking and kibitzing with the gardeners.

The stream of visitors into the house was controlled to keep the flow from feeling crowded or hurried. Stewards in each room were helpful with questions, but not obtrusive. The Earl and the estate staff are hardly oblivious to Highclere’s new reincarnation as Downton Abbey in the popular imagination. Each room contains a photo placard identifying how the room has been used and filmed in the series, from the Grand Parlor to the bedroom where the unfortunate Mr. Pamouk stayed, eh, briefly.

It’s a grand house indeed. It ought to be. Designed and built by Charles Barry, the architect of the Houses of Parliament, Highclere is one of England’s showcase Victorian mansions. Certainly the ground floor reception rooms are recognizable from the series. You won’t see Lady Mary or Carson gliding out of the dining room—but it’s easy to imagine..

Downstairs, the old servants’ domain has long been turned to more functional service space. The path of the house visit takes you downstairs to the tearoom and out into the carriage house yard and gift shop. Vestiges of the old service quarter remain. In the lower hall, the old bell board still hangs, where maids and footmen could be summoned by bell to any room in the house. I counted the named rooms signaled on the bell board. There were 64.

What happened to the world of Downton Abbey?

The other question about the series that I’ve received time and again still remains: “Whatever happened to the world of Downton Abbey?”

Part of the enjoyment we derive from period dramas like Downton Abbey is our understanding that these are, indeed, images of times past, from a world that no longer exists and will never exist again. The halcyon life of the British landed aristocracy reflected at Downton Abbey, though, is less than a century old. Why did it disappear so quickly and so completely? Where are Britain’s Downton Abbeys today?

Well, they write books about that. There is a short answer, though, and part of it is found in the series itself: The Great War. Among other effects of the war, Europe’s conflagration virtually drained Britain of a generation of young men. For the men remaining as well as for women, new avenues of employment quickly opened up that competed well against the option of domestic service.

Britain’s economic engine had already changed, however. Wealth no longer lay in the land that supported the old aristocracy; it lay increasingly in the manufacture and in commerce. Social and political power had shifted as well. Through the early 1900s, the working classes increasingly realized the power of their voice and vote. The social institution that best-represented community for nonagricultural workers became no longer the church or chapel, but the trade union. The unions provided workers with social clubs and institutes, a small measure of the economic safety net, and incrementally a better working life. And the unions exercised the political power of their united working-class voice.

When the Labour governments came in between the wars, they began a systematic program to dislodge the landed wealth of the hereditary peerage and gentry. Among the primary means of doing so was the establishment of death duties at deliberately confiscatory levels. It was, after all, the land that provided the principal income to the estate - in the form of ground rent. As the old baron died, his family had to sell up significant quantities of land to pay the death duties. That left measurably less rental income to maintain the estate and the family.

What does that mean?

After a couple of generations, there was just nothing left - or not enough left to maintain a home-like Downton Abbey. From Devon to Durham, hundreds of families were left with these huge, magnificent, historic albatrosses around their neck. From the 1920s-1960s scores of such stately homes were simply torn down. Dozens of grand country homes were gradually ceded to the National Trust, who do a monumental job of conserving them for the nation. Most of those still in private hands open their gates, gardens, and doors to paying visitors, whose admissions serve to provide the vastly expensive maintenance costs on such arky mansions. In many cases, that’s not enough, and the enterprising old stock has enhanced their entertainment appeal with everything from safari parks and farm stands to hosting weddings.

Whatever happened to Downton Abbey? It became Highclere Castle. The series has raised the profile of Highclere Castle just as Brideshead Revisited did for Yorkshire’s Castle Howard. The swell of visitors this spring is undoubtedly only a foretaste of the paying guests the house will receive during the summer season, one hopes.

[in-flagrante]

Downton Abbey ‘makes shock return’ as secret revival series ‘begins filming’

Report claims that the hit period drama is returning for a seventh series, nine years after coming to a close

Louis Chilton

1 hour ago

Hit ITV period drama Downton Abbey is reportedly filming a new series, nearly a decade after coming to an end.

The series, which originally aired on ITV from 2010 to 2015, followed the lives of an aristocratic Yorkshire family in the years between 1912 and 1926.

A new report in the Daily Mail claims that a revival series began filming a few weeks ago, and is expected to arrive on screens “by the end of the year”.

The outlet quotes a source close to the production as saying: “Filming has been going on for a few weeks now, it is all very, very secret. There are people working on it who have never seen secrecy like it.

“Those working on the set have been made to sign non-disclosure agreements so that they don’t give the game away but there is a lot of excitement at the return of Downton.”

The Independent understands that the series has not been commissioned for ITV.

The original series featured an ensemble cast that included Hugh Bonneville, Michelle Dockery, Elizabeth McGovern, Joanne Froggatt, Dan Stevens and Maggie Smith.

It was reportedly Smith’s reluctance to continue that prompted Downton to come to an end after six series in 2015, though the thespian returned for two feature film sequels, 2019’s Downton Abbey and 2022’s Downton Abbey: A New Era.

Rumours of a series comeback started surfacing back in May 2023.

In December, series creator Julian Fellowes didn’t brush off the possibility of a comeback, telling Radio Times: “I have said goodbye to Downton so many times, and I have written the last scene about six or seven times. Now I’ve got out of the habit of making permanent statements about whether it’s gone.

“It just gives me a lot of pleasure that so many people enjoyed it, so to feel that you created a show that cheers people up and they had a good time with it, I love that.”

The Independent has contacted production company Carnival Films and Fellowes for comment.

During its peak, Downton was one of the most popular series on UK TV, with its third series pulling in an average weekly audience of 11.5 million people.

In a two-star review of the latest film adaptation, The Independent’s critic Clarisse Loughrey wrote: “Downton Abbey: A New Era is whatever the opposite of a French Exit might look like. Rather than a party guest slipping out quietly, it’s the bumptious visitor making their final, sluggish turn around the room. Their pottering seems to extend for another hour or two – or another cocktail.

“The first film, released in 2019, was designed to pay a final farewell to Downton’s 47 TV episodes and five Christmas specials – an opportunity to tie up a few loose ends and resolve things with a hearty slap on its own back. A New Era manages to uncover even more threads, and makes neat little bows in the most languid way possible. It’s as much of a film as an encore to the encore can be.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/downton-abbey-new-series-return-itv-b2495921.html

[thatwasntaquestion]

"Do you ever wish you'd gone another way?" "Do you?" Happy Chelsie day everyone ;)

[chelsie-carson]

Phyllis Logan and Lesly Nicol advertising for the Chiswick in Film Festival

[such-g00d-luck]

Carsons' farewell to Lucy and Tom who are going on a honeymoon.

[evviejo]

thirteen’s era appreciation: 171/?