Servants (2003)

Servants is a bold and irreverent BBC1 series set largely below stairs in a country house in 1850's England. The series focuses on the hopes, dreams and ambitions of the servants who make a great household work. Servants enters Great Taplow, the family seat of the Sturges Bourne, not through the elegant facade of its portico but by the backstairs. Life below stairs is a hive of activity; home to a boisterous crowd of servants who thrive in their hidden community, where intrigue, rivalry, secrets, laughter and love abound. Servants opens as the Sturges Bourne family return with their retinue of servants after a summer away in Italy. As everyone springs into life, the canny butler, Mr Jarvis (Christopher Fulford) is not convinced by the charms of the newly-arrived second footman, George Cosmo (Jo Absolom). The housekeeper Flora Ryan (Orla Brady) is happy to take him at face value, but first footman William Forest (Kenny Doughty) sees George differently, sensing a rival in more ways than one. Elsewhere at Great Taplows life is not what it might seem and young Lord Harry's nursemaid, the beautiful and clever Grace May (Felicity Jones), has painful choices to make about her future.