Downton Abbey

Where I live, there's a quite famous cycling tour, called "100 manor houses route". On it's 209 km you pass 100 manor houses, many still inhabited by the owners (but most reconstructed/changed from the 17th century onwards) ...

By the owners, do you mean the descendants of the original owners?

By the way, i did assume that the manor system, or something like it was used throughout most of Europe, i wasn't willing to say so, since i don't know that for a fact.

Yes.

Indeed. When here, between 900 and 1200, some 'knights' got larger territories as feud/fief, they 'rented' their old houses as sub-feud/-fief to some of their 'knights'.

Upstairs Downstairs from 1971 - 75
I can remember watching it. It was black and white - not a colour TV.
As it is more than some time ago since I watched it I cannot really compare.
I had a feeling everybody was watching - there was not that much onTV in those days. It got to be a cult program.
The actors were very well known. The acting excellent, the story as much of a soap opera one could expect, but on a higher level.
Customs very beautiful in both series, little details historical correct
(which is not always the case)
The one takes place in London the other one in the country side, so it is as they go hand in hand.

Thanks, that puts things in perspective.

Here is a bit Downstairs Upstairs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwcTvfTzSw0

Saw a piece on Tv about the actual Downton Abbey manor house. Having the show shot there has saved the place which is still owned by the original aristocratic family.

It was shot in colour.

Posted a link to the full video last night here

http://able2know.org/topic/205704-2#post-5222375

I watched that documentary. It is a lovely place. Hugemongous. Nice to look at and to visit. I suppose you would just have to hunker down in the smoking room to feel cozy.

Love the show too Boomer. I think that Matthew will get the inheritance give it away and that Mary will leave him because of it. She almost didn't marry him because of it and that was before she even knew he would inherit it for sure.

Cool vid, Boss . . . thanks.

T%he new edition is in colour.
The old one I watched in black and white and it is also black and white on you tube See for yourself

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwcTvfTzSw0

The old version was in colour as well.



We all had black and white tellys then anyway. Sometimes programmes were taped in colour and monochrome. That was certainly the case with Jon Pertwee's Doctor Who.

We are both right.

The first four series had thirteen episodes each, while the final series had sixteen. Due to an industrial dispute over extra payments for using newly introduced colour equipment, during which broadcasting unions refused to allow their members to use colour cameras, the first six episodes of the first series were shot in black-and-white, and when colour production resumed, the first episode was remade in colour. Two endings were made, which could be shown depending on whether the black and white episodes were broadcast by the channel. The original untransmitted black-and-white version of the first episode is believed to have been wiped.

My memories of it are in black and white anyway. We didn't get a colour set until 1973/4 which also had the advantage of receiving BBC2, so we then had three channels instead of two.

this youtube channel has all of Upstairs, Downstairs (full-length episodes) as well as making of features and interviews with cast videos

https://www.youtube.com/user/LATENITEYORKIE/videos

Thank you for tip. I might try it and see if I can watch it in Sweden.

Sometimes it is better not to see things again after so many years.
What I found wonderful at one time in my life might not be my taste later.
Also it was the whole atmosphere around it. "Everybody" else was watching and I saw it with my family, now all gone. Being an older generation it was a life they had experieced. Not the way the people lived in the film, but the happenings around like Titanic, WWi and other happenings.
My greataunt lived in London just before WWl and stayed in a house which still excists in Hampstead. Price for single room per week was 1 pound 10 shilling and fires per day 1 shilling and eening only 6 d.

Poor Edith!