The Edwardians

The first episode of this eight-part anthology series is stellar, and well worth watching. It covers Messrs. Rolls and Royce, of car manufacturing fame.

This episode is the only episode of the series that is in color. It is currently available to watch on YouTube, and I definitely recommend checking it out.

Only one other of the episodes of the anthology series is uploaded to YouTube, and that one is in black and white and covers an individual Americans will be unacquainted with. You can check it out if you like; however as an American I didn't find it nearly as interesting or as enjoyable as episode one.

The series was only shown once in the U.S., and not in 1972, but more likely 1975 or so. It was shown on "Masterpiece Theatre" but not the entire eight episodes. Only a few of the episodes were shown, such as one about a strike that threatened the British Music Halls, that involved Marie Lloyd (Georgia Brown) and Charles Coborn (Peter Pratt, singing "The Man Who Broke The Bank At Monte Carlo" - Coborn's most famous number). The plot in that episode was how Lloyd was trying to talk an illusionist to join the budding labor walk-out. The episode regarding the founding of Rolls - Royce (with Michael Jayson as Henry Royce) was another of the episodes, as was one dealing with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Nigel Davenport) saving a young Parsee solicitor named George Edalji (Sam Dastor) from being accused of maiming and mutilating horses and cattle in England's midlands (the basis, by the way, of the play EQUUS). Anthony Hopkins played David Lloyd George, rising in this period to the Chancellorship of the Exchequer, and finding that his personal life and personality threaten his ambitions to be Prime Minister one day. The connecting link of the episodes was Thorley Walters, as Prince of Wales, and later King Edward VII. His own life was illustrated in dealing with his love affair with Alice Keppel. But that episode never aired in the U.S., nor did episodes about Baden-Powell and the founding of the Boy Scouts and the oddest of "great" Edwardians, the journalist - politician - lay lawyer, and swindler - Horatio Botttomley (Timothy West). Those episodes that were broadcast were pretty good (especially Hopkins, in real life a Welshman, playing one of history's greatest Welshman for a change). One wishes that the complete series was shown one day - it deserved to be shown completely.