The Grand

British period soap opera in the `Duchess of Duke Street' tradition set in a high-class Manchester hotel in the nineteen-twenties. A remarkably well preserved Susan Hampshire plays an aging courtesan to the gentry, Tim Healey is excellent as Jacob, the all-seeing Hall Porter with principles and Mark McGann is perfect casting as devious, supercilious hotel proprietor Marcus Bannerman.

However, a couple of cast changes to major characters cause confusion and some of the storylines, especially the surrogate baby issue, become extremely far-fetched.

Watch out for spunky little chambermaid Kate. She's played by Rebecca Callard, daughter of Beverley who was the lovely Liz Macdonald in the legendary `Coronation Street'. A soap dynasty in the making?

Typical English attention to production values by way of sets & costumes makes this undemanding entertainment.

"The Grand" is nothing like "Upstairs, Downstairs" or "The Duchess of Duke Street", or even like the original "Forsyte Saga" series. It doesn't possess their superlative qualities, their excellent, realistic production values. Those series had sympathetic characters, and by the time you were done watching them you felt like you were being wrenched away from beloved family members! There is no such feeling here with "The Grand" and its cast of largely unsavory characters.

It's actually a relief to STOP watching this series! All the characters, even the kindest one - Kate the servant girl - are out for Numero Uno, they are selfish to the core, and there is little feeling of bonding or real caring between them - and that is why one of their own ends up swinging from the gallows. In "Upstairs, Downstairs" we know that the aristocracy cares about their servants living below. In "The Grand" that feeling is almost completely lacking. Several times during the show long term servants are threatened to be fired, for example, and then almost immediately they are re-instated. "Oops, sorry." No one behaved that way back in 1920. Your "yes" meant "yes", and your "no" meant "no".

The writing is not cohesive or spellbinding enough to keep your attention going for long. Ridiculous mistakes were made in the scripts for these shows: for instance, why would the police arrive to arrest Monica the servant girl for murder in the public foyer of the hotel, without first going upstairs to look at the dead man and the evidence? Bizarre and extremely unrealistic. Who wrote this, a nine year old?

Then we have the smarmy situation of a man lusting after his brother's wife - for the entire part one and into part two of the series, and then the story line is just dropped abruptly like a hot potato, and it goes into other unrealistic directions - including black market baby selling and more prostitution stories! Who cares about these reprehensible characters?

It looked to me like the writer was just grasping at straws....what can I come up with next that's titillating enough to hold their attention? Then they change two major cast members at the start of series two, which disrupts the feeling of the entire show and its flow of events; in addition, since part two was made a year or so after part one, all the cast members who were kept on immediately looked older.

But the worst flaw in "The Grand" is one that seems to be common today for too many writers and producers and directors of historical series and films. That is they insist on applying modern cultural and societal mores to a time period which was much more conservative than our own, and which kept these issues - if they even came up at all - private and between families. Not broadcast to an entire hotel filled with strangers. Again, doing this does not endear an intelligent audience to a vintage period story, because it is artificial and forced, almost as if someone is trying to push their own immoral agenda on their audience.

Skip it.

I thoroughly enjoyed season one. I became so engrossed I actually imagined they were real people. I felt for them. I was there. The scenes were amazing: 1) the son kissing/sobbing his love who admitted her true nature; 2) the wife and the brother looking at each other while the symphony played in the last episode of season one. It was spellbinding, another world, a dream. I was jolted, rather violently out of this dream during season two. The people were replaced with characters of themselves, who talked differently, interacted differently, and in some cases looked different. Actors/Actresses who were amazing were switched for horrible versions the second season. It would have been better to have gotten rid of them in this case. The script seemed forced and the characters who you grew to know and understand were acting grossly unlike themselves. I honestly could only get through two episodes of the second season. So sad. I will tell anyone, watch the 1st Season of the Grand...and that's it.

I must confess I shop at bargain outlets and the best kept secrets are the DVD sections. Once you weed past the hundreds over produced fitness disks, you may just come upon a little gem marked $3.99. Such was the case with The Grand, Series Two. We were disappointed not to be able to find Series One in the stack, but have made it a quest. The costumes are beautiful and the characters little vignettes of humanity both good and bad. You endear the sweet characters and loathe the ones twisting a black mustache and plotting their next evil move. The Series does not pretend to paint a pretty picture. It promises "Secrets, Betrayal, Romance, Revenge and Danger." It delivers on each of these promises! The twenties were often seen as a wild and fun time, but they were a precursor for political disaster on a worldwide scale and I believe the series captured this well.

Man, I haven't seen so many cat fights since General Hospital, Days of our Lives, or as the World Turns hit the mid-afternoon time slots and infested American television way back when.

"The Grand" is a series heralding from the mid 90s about the trials and tribulations of a family owned and run hotel in Manchester England circa the first World War. It's a period piece, and full of vibrant female characters and interpersonal conflicts that should appease the most ardent of female viewer-ship. Ostensibly we're looking the social schism of English mid upper society and their servants, and the intrigues that culminate from that rift and intermingling.

Blue bloods and working girls looking for survival, life and love, all the while internecine fighting takes place with the occasional slap, punch, scratch or hair pull after a verbal confrontation conflagrates.

As a guy who, to be honest, welcomes a break from the usual guns and spaceship fare I'm so often exposed to, I do have to admit to getting a little weary of a recycling of themes here. But, when you're aiming for the classic Jane Austen like set (perhaps fast forward 50 or so years), you're going to get a little repetition in the story and thematic departments.

Still, it is a visually attractive, well written, and exceptionally well acted piece of televised theatre. Exceptionally well shot for a TV production (not to mention very well lit, and I rarely say that about any TV show), this is a show to see, if only once.

The themes are adult in nature, so parents with pre-teen girls (or even boys if they're so inclined) might want to screen or caution their young ones as they watch.

Enjoy.