Season 2 - SPOILERS

Episode 2 - A Pair of Exiles ( or A Banquet of Consequences )

This is an excellent episode.

Poor James shows here for the first time his great capacity for making an awful mess of things. He has run up large debts that he has no hope of repaying and has been drinking too much and getting noticed in his Regiment for the wrong reasons. And on top of that he has knocked up Sarah Moffat ( do we ever find out what her real name is ? ) the once house parlour maid at Eaton Place and until recently a stage actress.

Sir Geoffrey Dillon the Southwold family solicitor is called in once again to act as a "cleaner". I was very critical of Sir Geoffrey in episode six of season one where he officiously dealt with Mary the new young servant at Eaton Place who had been raped and made pregnant at her previous place of employment. But I am much more sympathetic to him after watching this episode. It must be very trying to have to be the "bad" guy and take the backlash for cleaning up the messes that other people make.

So Sir Geoffrey has helped to make arrangements for Sarah's confinement and for Sarah and the baby to be given a place at the Southwold country estate. There Sarah can keep and raise her baby in return for light duties as a servant which I think is most generous and honourable. And James is to be packed off to India to get him clear of the whole mess in the hope that he might come good which I think is sensible.

Sarah reacts as though she has been sentenced to transportation ( though admittedly with light not hard labour ) and Lady Marjorie reacts as though she has been personally done down by Judas Iscariot himself ! In Lady Marjorie's case because she didn't want to be separated from her beloved first born James and because her considerable ego was affronted by being presented with a fait accompli. I suspect though that in Sarah's case it was because she was hoping to be able to wangle a very different outcome ( by using the baby as leverage ) involving wedding bells for her and James and her becoming an Upstairs Bellamy ! Fat chance of that ever happening.

Meanwhile James tellingly put the couch between himself and Sarah and said never a word while the arrangements were being made although he did break ranks to go out at the end and say goodbye to Sarah. But obviously James did not want to be saddled with her and the baby so he agreed to take his medicine and go to India as the significantly lesser of two evils. He was more than happy to have the sex, the love and the coddling but he ran a very long mile from facing the responsibility.

Sarah might almost be as complex a character as James it seems to me. It was revealing I thought when she was telling James about how a gentleman had thrown a rose at her at the end of her act and it had knocked her hat off but she hadn't got much of a laugh from the audience. Sarah's act was growing stale so what was she to do ? Getting herself pregnant to James and becoming Mrs Bellamy with a house full of servants might have seemed like a bloody good plan. Sarah has the mentality of a criminal I believe. She, perhaps instinctively, sees other people as marks. How can she manipulate them and use them to her benefit ? God knows how long she had been fending for herself and perhaps it was born out of necessity as much as anything.

I had to laugh at Mrs Bridges on hearing of James troubles saying sagely that it was the Southwold bad blood at work again after having previously offered exactly the same opinion about Elizabeth and her troubles.

And Lady Marjorie was devastated by the realisation that she had given birth to and raised a couple of quite flawed individuals in James and Elizabeth. And perhaps it had even entered her mind that she might just be a quite flawed individual herself.

One thing that puzzled me was when Colonel Winter ( as he listed James debts to Richard and Lady Marjorie ) said that James was "...being done by tradesmen" and that "...once they start, they are the very devil ". Who were these "tradesmen" and why would James have been in debt to them ?

Episode 3 - Married Love ( or Do Us a Favour )

Lawrence still hasn't consummated the marriage and Elizabeth is most unhappy and showing it which makes lily livered Lawrence irritable. Lawrence's publisher Sir Edwin Partridge manages to winkle the trouble out of him and Lawrence suggests that perhaps Sir Edwin might er, fill in for him. And apparently at a house party ( with the help of a good amount of champagne and schmoozing with Elizabeth ) the old silver fox does just that.

Personally I think Thomas would have been a better choice for the job. Keep it in house, you know ! But then Lawrence might not have approved of Elizabeth making moves on his manservant.

Episode 4 - Whom God hath Joined... ( or Another Rooster in the Hen House )

Well it's all up for Elizabeth and Lawrence's marriage as Elizabeth and her belongings do a runner back to Eaton Place while he is away visiting an Aunt.

Hilarity ensues ( well my hilarity anyway ) when Elizabeth tells Sir Geoffrey Dillon ( looking for grounds for divorce ) that the marriage had not been consummated and a subsequent physical examination of Elizabeth reveals that not only is she not a virgin but that she is three months pregnant to another man ! Richard for once gives Elizabeth the rounds of the morning room on learning the shocking news only to have Elizabeth react hysterically and predictably cry ' Never mind all of that trivial stuff, what about ME ME ME !!! '

As Mrs Bridges observed in a previous episode Elizabeth is still a child, and a spoiled one. She leaves Lawrence and the marriage on the sly without so much as a note to let him know what she has done. She returns to Eaton Place with her luggage without telling anyone beforehand. She takes her ill feelings out on Rose in a contemptible and inexcusable way. And when she gets called out for her bad behaviour she throws a tantrum and wails about how no-one thinks about her !

Then poor Lawrence has his very own hysterical meltdown when "his vouchsafed man" Thomas bails on him to accept a position at Eaton Place. Which by the way was in spite of Hudson's emphatic efforts to keep Thomas out. Here we see one of Hudson's biggest flaws, his tendency to get things seriously wrong by sometimes interpreting situations the way he wants them to be rather than the way they are. Hudson sees Thomas as a threat to his authority and standing as the top dog downstairs and so he tried his best to block him. But when confronted with his misunderstanding and misdeed to give him his due Hudson went to Lady Marjorie and cleared the way for Thomas after all.

Lady Marjorie is too soft-hearted for her children's good. She forgives them unconditionally no matter what they do.

It's a pity Elizabeth and Lawrence's marriage didn't last because I thought they deserved each other.

Episode 5 - Guest of Honour

The King comes to dinner at Eaton Place and the servants have their work cut out for them, especially Mrs Bridges with the cooking of the elaborate meal. This part of the show is interesting as it gives a glimpse of just how much work is involved and we see a number of nice dishes as they are prepared. The dinner party itself is a rather dull affair.

And then during the dinner Sarah shows up at the servants entrance, in labour ! And this is when the episode shifts up several gears as Lady Marjorie resets her priorities and looks after Sarah first and the King second. Sadly the birth doesn't go well and there is not a living grandchild at the end of it. In the aftermath Lady Marjorie refuses to scold Sarah and treats her very well much to Sarah's consternation.

Miss Roberts shows her winning personality again as she reacts with her usual venom to the idea that "that slut!" Sarah should be allowed to take her meals with the servants. But Hudson comes to the rescue with another sermon on forgiveness and charity and carries the vote in Sarah's favour.

Was Sarah heartbroken at losing the baby ? Either she is stunningly resilient or she didn't seem to be. And why did she choose to go back to Eaton Place at such a critical time ? Perhaps she would have lost the baby even if she had stayed at Southwold but her behaviour was reckless and negligent. Perhaps she hadn't given up the idea of using the baby as leverage and decided to give it another go with a last do-or-die dash.

Episode 6 - The Property of a Lady

The late Captain Hammond's batman Private Dooley comes around to Eaton Place trying to sell Lady Marjorie's love letters back to her and Watkins the chauffeur becomes the go-between. Watkins decides to hit Lady Marjorie and Richard up separately and scores 200 pounds each from them . Then he enlists Sarah to pose as Lady Marjorie to retrieve the letters. Once they have them Sarah sandbags Dooley and Watkins splashes him with booze before offloading the blackmailer to a policeman on the beat.

But Sarah threatens to dob Watkins in unless he gives the money back to Lady Marjorie and Richard and after a dark night of the soul he does so. Sarah and Watkins are a pair of rogues but Watkins is a rogue through and through. Sarah is both better and worse than I'd given her credit for previously. On the one hand she made Watkins give the money back but then she told him " If you're going to do them do them big ". And she wasn't afraid of using a cosh on Dooley.

Poor old Hudson suspected that Watkins knew more than he did about the goings on. And it put him in the difficult position of having to play the part of occupying the higher ground of authority while he had the uneasy feeling that Watkins had pulled that ground out from under him. Hudson's gut instinct about Watkins was right all along, he is a wrong-un.

Meanwhile Lady Marjorie and Richard exchange gifts bought from their unexpected boomerang windfalls and happily agree with each other that Watkins is a fine fellow !

Episode 7 - Your Obedient Servant ( or Poor Relations )

Hudson gets himself into a pickle by pretending to be a well-to-do gentleman presumably to impress his visiting successful younger brother and his wife and daughter while they are briefly visiting from abroad. He spends his life savings, or a considerable part of it, on the charade and hits Mrs Bridges up for hers as well.

Meanwhile Richard is having to deal with his odious older brother Arthur who is staying at Eaton Place while he has business to attend to in London. Arthur is the kind of miserable bastard who always sees the worst in everyone. With Hudson acting suspiciously and taking time off Arthur looks at him as though he suspects Hudson of being Jack the Ripper, or worse a fornicator !, which becomes laugh out loud funny. Arthur's continual accusations about Hudson even start to make Richard doubt his butler.

Eventually Hudson is found out by Richard thanks to the machinations of Arthur. Poor Hudson is mortified, it's all over ! But things turn out well as Richard has no intention of sacking Hudson over the matter. And Richard ends up telling his bullying brother Arthur what he thinks of him in no uncertain terms.

And we get to learn that Miss Roberts was forced into a life of service by her father for the terrible sin of walking out with a young man, once. Families eh ? Who needs 'em !

Also Lady Marjorie had gone to Southwold because her father was seriously ill and she took Watkins and Sarah with her but not Roberts her Lady's maid.

Would the normally prudent Hudson really have been so foolish as to spend his life savings or a good part of them, not to mention Mrs Bridges as well, in such a silly way ? It seems that sometimes at least the characters of Up/Down are sacrificed to the needs of the episode rather than the episode being written in a way that is consistent with the characters.

Episode 8 - Out of the Everywhere ( or All About Baby )

Elizabeth comes back to Eaton Place with baby Lucy and is preceded thereto a week earlier by Nanny Webster who has come out of retirement to look after her third generation of Southwold babies. Although that seems to be selling her short by a few generations.

Sarah has trained as a Nursery maid in preparation for the baby and is alarmed by Nanny Webster's general decrepitude and incapacity. But when she complains to Elizabeth she gets short shrift. Elizabeth just wants to get back to having a good time free of encumbrances.

In the end Nanny Webster gets the order of the velvet boot and Elizabeth has her lackadaisical maternal instinct fanned into a little flicker by Saint Sarah of the Finer Feelings.

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I sometimes wonder where the writers get their episode titles from and this one seemed so vague I Googled it and it turned out to be from a poem. So here it is:

' Baby ' by George Macdonald a Christian Minister (1824–1905)

Where did you come from, baby dear?
- Out of the everywhere into the here.

Where did you get those eyes so blue?
- Out of the sky as I came through.

What makes the light in them sparkle and spin?
- Some of the starry spikes left in.

Where did you get that little tear?
- I found it waiting when I got here.

What makes your forehead so smooth and high?
- A soft hand strok’d it as I went by.

What makes your cheek like a warm white rose?
- I saw something better than any one knows.

Whence that three-corner’d smile of bliss?
- Three angels gave me at once a kiss.

Where did you get this pearly ear?
- God spoke, and it came out to hear.

Where did you get those arms and hands?
- Love made itself into bonds and bands.

Feet, whence did you come, you darling things?
- From the same box as the cherubs’ wings.

How did they all just come to be you?
- God thought about me, and so I grew.

But how did you come to us, you dear?
- God thought about you, and so I am here.

Episode 9 - An Object of Value

Lady Southwold was staying at Eaton Place after the death of Lord Southwold. A diamond brooch of hers went missing and the servants came under suspicion of stealing it. Miss Roberts was put in the frame by Miss Hodges, Lady Southwold's companion. And Watkins was put in the frame by Rose although for once I don't blame her.

Watkins was a two-faced scheming bastard and just clever enough to get away with it. Rose was afraid of losing Sarah to him and confronted Watkins about the amount of time Sarah had been spending with him. Watkins implied that Rose's concern for Sarah was more than just platonic, and maybe he was right. All the same there was no excuse for the way Watkins man-handled Rose when he kicked her out of his room.

Some may think I am too hard on Watkins especially after we learn in this episode of his seemingly unhappy childhood as a middle child in a large family where he was considered to have "let the side down". So Watkins may have had no-one in his corner so to speak and grown up with an understandable me versus them mindset. But that doesn't excuse asking Sarah to steal a bottle of wine for him from the wine cellar. Or refusing to answer Hudson's question about Watkin's visitor. Or being discontent as an employee of the Bellamy's when he had things very good indeed. Watkins had the low mentality of a criminal and he and Sarah were a good match from that point of view.

Sarah though was content with her latest beau after Watkins had a punch up with an associate of his who thought Sarah was fair game.

And poor old Hudson was the reluctant meat in the sandwich as he tried unsuccessfully to get to the bottom of the supposed theft by questioning the staff under him. Miss Roberts was one of the characters I couldn't warm to in any way. She was a miserable and insufferable pain in the arse all the time. And Hudson takes the blame from Watkins for "having it in for him the second time".

In the end it turned out that Lady Southwold had forgotten that she put the brooch in at the Jewellers for repair. What an idiot.