The Temptress
Lady Persie, played by Claire Foy, the star of BBC1′s Little Dorrit, is the sister of Lady Agnes and is described as ‘walking dark and dangerous path’. She will break hearts like her predecessor, the glamorous Lady Georgina Stockbridge, a hedonistic party girl played by Lesley-Anne Down who eventually saw the error of her ways after accidentally killing a cowherd in a road traffic accident. Ms Down, now 56, went on to find fame in America and is currently starring in the long-running daytime soap opera The Bold And The Beautiful.

The new project is actually a revival of ITV’s Seventies hit ‘Upstairs, Downstairs‘. The show originally ran on ITV from 1971 to 1975, spanning the fictional life of the Bellamy family from 1903 to 1930, and was the brainchild of actresses Dame Eileen Atkins and Jean Marsh. The new version will be set in 1936. In the new series, which takes up the story six years after the original left off in 1930, Rose makes an emotional comeback to the London townhouse to serve the new family, under the steely Lady Agnes Holland.

Interestingly, co-creator and star of the show Jean Marsh is reprising her role as Rose Buck, originally a lowly parlour maid but now elevated to housekeeper. The other mastermind behind the show, Dame Eileen Atkins, didn’t act in the original series but now plays the formidable matriarch of the aristocratic family who move in ‘upstairs’ at 165 Eaton Place.

Art Malik, Anne Reid, Ed Stoppard, Adrian Scarborough, Ellie Kendrick and Nico Mirallegro are also part of the cast. A full-scale replica of Eaton Place has been built at studios in Cardiff and filming begins next month. BBC is planning to screen the drama as early as autumn and it will be broadcast on Masterpiece in the US shortly after it makes its British debut. They hope to find similar success to the original, which was broadcast in more than 70 countries to an audience of more than a billion.

Writer Heidi Thomas, who also scripted the successful BBC’s drama Cranford, said: ‘The series will be shot through with sensuality. This is a drama very much about warm-blooded human beings.

‘In a house like Eaton Place, there is a limit to what you can keep behind closed doors. The place is a pressure cooker and the tensions continue to rise and rise until they boil over.

‘Whether the characters are upstairs or downstairs they are ­living in close proximity to each other and these are the dramas that will engage viewers.’

Piers Wenger, head of drama at BBC Wales where the series is being made, said: ‘We are delighted to have secured the rights to Upstairs, Downstairs with the full blessing and support of the original co-creators.

‘This is not a remake but a ­completely new version, set in a different era with a whole new cast of characters.’

Source: Daily Mail

Scan by Lorna – thank you:
- Magazine Scans > Scans from 2010 > Mail on Sunday – July 25, 2010

The series will be produced by UK indie Daybreak Pictures (The Trial of Tony Blair) and French producer Breakout Films (Resolution 819) and will be directed by Kosminsky, who has worked on Wuthering Heights and race drama Britz.

The 4x1hour mini-series is part of Channel 4′s £20 million push to expand its drama output following this year’s end of reality series Big Brother and the network will air it in 2011, followed by a broadcast on Canal Plus as well as cultural channel Arte.

Homeland follows Little Dorrit‘s Claire Foy as a young girl who travels to Israel after uncovering her grandfather’s journal documenting his experience in the British army around the time of the British mandate of Palestine.

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The studio has not yet set a new date for the film, starring Nicolas Cage, Ron Perlman, Stephen Campbell Moore, Robert Sheehan, Claire Foy, Ulrich Thomsen, Stephen Graham and Christopher Lee.

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At today’s Winter/Spring BBC3 launch, BBC controller of drama commissioning Ben Stephenson assured me that, as a big fan of horror, I am going to like Pulse, which is written by Doctor Who writer Paul Cornell and stars Claire Foy, who previously starred in Little Dorrit for the BBC.

Pulse, according to the BBC’s blurb, is set in a teaching hospital, which is home to some of the UK’s most promising trainee doctors:

But beneath its veneer of medical normality lies a secret network of dangerous experiments, pushing back the boundaries of science with potentially horrifying consequences

Now, I was a big fan of E4’s Dead Set, which, for a TV series, managed to be pretty gruesome and dark, and really provided for those who like their series a little more on the edgy side.

So I can only hope that BBC3 follows Dead Set’s lead to make sure that Pulse does something similar, and gives horror fans, who I often think are under-served by British television, something to get their teeth stuck in to.

The drama is planned as a one-off at the moment, and will run alongside two other pilots commissioned by BBC3, including a drama called Dappers from Mamma Mia! writer Catherine Johnson, and another from Leo Richardson called Stanley Park.

Neither of these is a horror (although Dappers is about two two single mothers living in Bristol — which sounds scary in itself) and I can only hope that that Pulse proves to be a hit, and that the BBC commission it for a full series.

Foy has already proved herself to be a good actress, so I am sure there will be an appetite among viewers to see more of her, if not more blood and gore.

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Synopsis:

Homeland is a fictional four part drama that tells the story of Erin, an 18-year-old Londoner who, while spending a summer in Israel, finds herself face to face with the brutal realities of the conflict in the Middle East.

The drama will intercut between two timeframes and stories: that of Erin in the present-day, and that of her grandfather who, in the 1940s was part of the peace-keeping force in Palestine and witnessed first hand the violent events during the last years of the British Mandate.

The story begins when Erin’s best friend, Eliza, the daughter of wealthy Israeli-Jewish parents, is called back to Israel for her National Service and invites Erin along to spend the summer with her and her family. En route, Erin starts to read a diary that she has found that was written by her grandfather in the forties. Moved by his account and the realisation that he wasn’t much older than her when he wrote the diary, Erin retraces his steps in modern day Israel, seeing for herself the hard facts of life for both Jewish and Palestinian communities. But as Len’s story unfolds, Erin finds herself on a journey which takes her deep into the Occupied Territories, the unresolved disputes of the Mandate period – and right to the heart of the current conflict in that troubled land.

Sources: Channel 4 and Canal+

This was a gorgeous lump of a play and produced here with levity and sensuousness at a level way beyond a rehearsed reading status.

Claire Foy is like a luminous liquid flowing around the stage and the rapport between Messers Harman and O’Neill was a joy to behold.

The scenes between Claire and Rory seemed much more sexually charged because the actors rarely stood very near each other and had their playtexts on lecterns in front of them. It was all in the delivery and it had me dribbling.

Blissful evening

To read the full review please go here.

UPDATE:

Little Dorrit comes up big:
Dark horse miniseries takes home the most Emmys

It was the little engine that could.

After staying off the radar with little marketing push, the BBC/PBS production of Little Dorrit surprisingly became the most honored program of the night with seven Emmys, including best miniseries.

It was a come-from-behind win. At the nomination stage, Dorrit was tied with its competitor in the best miniseries category, HBO’s Generation Kill, for sixth place, behind such heavy hitters as series 30 Rock, Mad Men and movies Grey Gardens and Into the Storm.

But in the end, the Charles Dickens adaptation squeaked past the dominant player in the longform space, HBO. The cabler’s Gardens was second in the program tally with six Emmys.

“This is a fantastic win that Dickens would be proud of,” said BBC Worldwide exec vp programming and production Jane Tranter, who commissioned the mini at the BBC. “If he was around today, he would undoubtedly be writing for television.”

Click here for the full list of Emmy Awards winners.

Congratulations to the entire cast and crew of Little Dorrit on a very well deserved win!!!

Claire Foy will be doing the rehearsed reading of Tennessee Williams’ Fugitive Kind at the Donmar Warehouse on 15 September 2009 at 7.30 pm.

Unfortunately no press photos get taken at the readings. So if you attend it and happen to take any photos of Claire, we’d greatly appreciate if you could share them with us.

All reading tickets £10.
Up to 20 £7.50 standing tickets available once the performance is sold out.

GALLERY LINK:
- Miscellaneous: Rehearsed Reading of Fugitive Kind at the Donmar Warehouse