Jean Marsh, who has died aged 90, created the classic 1970s television series Upstairs, Downstairs with her friend and fellow actor Dame Eileen Atkins . As well as co-writing the series, Marsh played the part of Rose Buck, a parlour maid, who became something of a sex symbol in the early 70s and returned as the housekeeper when the series was revived nearly four decades later. The period drama, “the everyday story of Edwardian folk”, as the Guardian described it at the time, followed the intertwined lives of the upper-class Bellamy family and their servants, at 165 Eaton Place in Belgravia, London.
Set between 1903 and 1930, the series documented a period of immense social change. Marsh and Atkins had originally conceived of a story centred around two maids. Both from working-class families, the actors wanted to create a drama that depicted characters with backgrounds more like their own.
They came up with the idea “over a Sunday lunch”. The Forsyte Saga was then a popular television drama series. “It was beautiful, of course,” Marsh recalled .
“The clothes, the houses ...
But we thought ...
who is cooking the food and ironing the clothes? At the time, apart from Dickens there was nothing written about the working classes. And I was determined to be the maid and not the lady.” Their idea was developed by the television producers John Hawkesworth and John Whitney and taken up by London Weekend Television.
Upstairs, Downstairs ran for five series on ITV between .