I love it.
But in certain American circles it is a love that dare not speak its name.
The weekly series is the Gray Lady of American television, on the air every Sunday night at nine for over a quarter century, bringing a sampling of BBC-2 and ITV costume drama to middle-class, middle-brow, and largely middle-aged viewers of PBS (the American educational television network). The program has an anachronistic 1950's-style feel. Each episode begins with explanations from a host seated in an armchair, just like Ronald Reagan introducing GE Theatre or Rod Serling presenting Twilight Zone .
In this case the emcee is retired New York Times columnist Russell Baker, a tweedy, gray-haired, seventy-year-old pillar of the Establishment who once chaired the board for the Pulitzer Prizes, the glitteringest honor in American journalism. He is gamely trying to fill the slippers of the irreplacable and deeply missed Alistair Cooke, who assumed the leather armchair from 1971-1993, bringing authority and sophistication to brief introductions detailing the roles of butler, cook, housekeeper and parlour-maid in series like Upstairs, Downstairs.
This reliable entertainment has taken its share of criticism over the years. It has been attacked for being too English -- indeed, the Union Jack was removed from the program logo in 1976. It has been blasted for being sponsored by an oil company -- although the Mobil Corporation has never asked for more than its own discreet logo at the beginning and the end, and has never run an actual advertisement. It has been skewered for promoting literary escapism instead of "challenging," "relevant," and "uncomfortable" viewing, although the series has presented works from Marxist screenwriters such as Trevor Griffiths, and episodes have featured more violence, nudity and bad language than American network television had ever permitted.
Worst of all, from the point of view of its critics, is that Masterpiece Theatre has come to represent "Quality." The best actors, the best writers, the best scripts, the best directors, the best sets, the best costumes, the best props, the best music -- all of this is considered oppressive, hegemonic, canonical, and wrong. That American commercial television producers imitated British mini-series and created Roots, Holocaust, and The Winds of War after seeing how the British did it is further evidence of the program's pernicious influence.
Among the most prominent critics has been Erik Barnouw, professor at Columbia University and author of the definitive Oxford History of Broadcasting in the United States , who damned PBS programs like Masterpiece Theatre as "safely splendid." What fascinated me, in researching the history of the series for my book Masterpiece Theatre and the Politics of Quality (Scarecrow Press, 1999), was how an excellent program that outwardly appears to be so placid and reassuring -- so Establishment -- conceals a tumultuous and dramatic behind-the-scenes drama reminiscent of I, Claudius. For within PBS, Establishment figures continually plotted to destroy the series because they did not share the same definition of quality!
For PBS officials and their university acolytes, good television was and remains, in the words of Fred Friendly, "painful." And since Masterpiece Theatre is obviously not "painful", it therefore is not truly good. This legacy of Puritanism comports with the American intellectual's claim not to watch television (Mobil's Herb Schmertz once called Masterpiece Theatre "a program for people who don't watch television").
PBS banished the man who brought Masterpiece Theatre to the air. Stanford Calderwood was forced from his job as president of Boston's public broadcasting outlet almost immediately after arranging the first season (today he runs an private investment company). He had come down on the wrong side in a dispute over the use of the word "motherfucker" on a local PBS program (Calderwood was against it). His tenure had lasted only six months and he never worked at PBS again.
After his departure, Mobil's public relations executive Herb Schmertz stepped into the power vacuum and picked upUpstairs, Downstairs from London Weekend Television. The intrigue over this move left its permanent scares on the series -- and is at the center of my book because it reveals differing notions of quality in the contest between the PBS officials and the Mobil team. The battle over the program defined the series and PBS. After it was over PBS resolved never to let another sponsor have Mobil's influence. And the result was that it never had another series as good as Masterpiece Theatre (with the exception of Mystery! a spinoff originally sponsored by Mobil).
Upstairs, Downstairs was recommended by the wife of the chairman of Mobil, who had heard about it at a dinner party while visiting London. When Mobil attempted to put it on the the series, there was an immediate revolt among public broadcasting officials. They opposed what they saw as commercial "soap opera" appearing on their educational program. And they objected to the sponsor choosing the show.
The PBS hierarchy simply would not recognizeUpstairs, Downstairs as a quality show. That confrontation ended with the resignation of the PBS producer -- after Mobil threatened to pull its funding. In the end, Upstairs, Downstairs ran for four years, won more awards than any other series, enjoyed high ratings, great reviews, and ensured the permanence of the Masterpiece Theatre on the PBS schedule. It was a "classic" by any criterion -- except that of the PBS experts.
PBS was blind to what Mobil could easily see because Upstairs, Downstairs was not based on an published book (though it was derivative of The Forsyte Saga), it was entertaining, it was something new, and it was popular. After failing to kill it, PBS executives spent time trying to extract "overhead" and "production" costs -- insisting on expensive "fillers" to round out the hour. The records of the period are filled with endless battles between Mobil and PBS over these charges.
In a challenge to Mobil, PBS tried producing two multimillion-dollar flops which almost bankrupted both the New York and Boston stations -- The Adams Chronicles and The Scarlet Letter. The bid to show PBS could produce better classic serials than British or American commercial television revealed that PBS couldn't even recognize a decent script. To this day, PBS has been unable to produce its own successful drama (the highest-rated program in the cancelled American Playhouse series, Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City, was produced by Britain's Channel Four).
Mobil could see what PBS could not because as a sponsor, Mobil wanted to please its audience, an audience that wanted true "quality", which would in turn reflect favorably upon the sponsor -- the so-called "halo effect." Mobil had a greater investment and therefore a greater incentive to explore all dimensions of quality (during the OPEC oil crisis the company had been accused of price gouging and was facing the possibility of nationalization). Likewise, both BBC and ITV companies sought to attract and hold audiences. Their common interests worked to encourage genuine quality. PBS's ideological contempt for the audience, its hostility to popularity, and its rejection of the new, worked against quality drama.
Mobil had no such puritanical attitude, and could see that a period soap opera like Upstairs, Downstairs could be enjoyable and excellent, too. No wonder then, that when I interviewed British television executives, they sang Mobil's praises, and told me that they had as little to do with PBS officials as possible.
I came to the conclusion that in this case, the quality of Masterpiece Theatre had resulted because of, rather than in spite of, its commerical sponsorship.
Alistair Cooke's Letter From America (BBC)