To the Manor Born, anybody seen this show?

[raincitygirl]

I have been watching To the Manor Born, a Britcom from about 1980 with Penelope Keith as Audrey fforbes-Hamilton, the exultant widow of the owner of a fabulous manor house (and when I say exultant, I mean she jumps up and down for joy at a private moment in between her husband's funeral and the reception). However, her joy is short-lived, as it turns out Mr. fforbes-Hamilton has left her very short of money and she is forced to sell her beloved estate to Richard de Vere (played by a deadpan Peter Bowles), a nouveau riche widowed supermarket tycoon with an elderly mother in residence who has an unpronounceable last name (needless to say, Richard de Vere is not his birth name). Audrey stays in the village, and she and the new owner of what she still thinks of as HER home embark on a prickly love-hate relationship. It's VERY funny.

However, I've reached the church episode, which is an odd one, because it assumes that Richard is an Anglican and indeed a Christian. I had assumed the character was Jewish, partly because of a young him and his parents having fled Czechoslovakia in 1939. Also because he's just generally coded as a total outsider to this very traditional upper class English countryside life. Did anybody else get the impression that Richard was supposed to be Jewish, or was that just me jumping to conclusions?

I hope everybody is well on this fine Sunday evening (well, it's Sunday evening in my time zone, may not be in everybody's), and the people on the East Coast of the USA are staying warm after their blizzard. I am pleasantly full of salmon teriyaki and contemplating watching another episode of To the Manor Born. But if the stupid cat doesn't stop jumping on the desk and treading on the laptop while i'm trying to type, I may lose my marbles. I give up on fighting with her and will hit "post".

Comments

[madripoor_rose]

Oh, I loved that show! Haven't seen it in years.

I...have to say I think you're jumping to conclusions. (I might be wrong. My family got out of Lithuania in the 1930s and we're Catholic. I always assumed the Outsider stuff was simply from him being Eastern European in general, and not British, and being working class made good and not a blue blood.)

[raincitygirl]

I think they still show it on PBS on occasion. And they may have a DVD set at your public library, if you want to rekindle your relationship with it.

I have been known to jump to conclusions in the past, so it wouldn't especially surprise me if I'd jumped to conclusions here. There were, I suppose, other reasons than the religious one for people to leave Czechoslovakia in a hurry in 1939. Probably reasons also related to Hitler, mind you.

I laughed myself into a coughing fit in the second episode as Richard's mother sobbed, "it's just like leaving Czechoslovakia in '39. Only able to take a few personal possessions." as they drove from Mayfair to the manor, followed by about 8 moving vans.

[madripoor_rose]

I've added it to the Great Rewatch List, heh.

It is a reasonable assumption, but I don't know if they'd have left that subtext or outright stated that he was Jewish....the only canon Jewish character from an 80s sitcom I can remember is Rhoda Morgenstern from Mary Tyler Moore/her spinoff.

[out_there]

However, I've reached the church episode, which is an odd one, because it assumes that Richard is an Anglican and indeed a Christian. I had assumed the character was Jewish, partly because of a young him and his parents having fled Czechoslovakia in 1939. Also because he's just generally coded as a total outsider to this very traditional upper class English countryside life. Did anybody else get the impression that Richard was supposed to be Jewish, or was that just me jumping to conclusions?

I never got the Jewish impression (personally, I might have assumed Catholic, but I come from a Catholic background), but I don't know if Anglican in Czechoslovakia is realistic. Then again, a bit of a google shows that there are Anglican churches in the Czech republic from 1867 and a story of German Jewish immigrants coming to England and choosing to baptize their children into Anglicanism, so it's not ridiculous that Richard would be Anglican.

It's one of those shows where as much as he's an outsider to the upper crust country way of doing things, he's still very... British in some basic assumption ways.

And it's a very funny show. Penelope Keith is wonderful in it.

[raincitygirl]

Excellent points. And yes, Penelope Keith is super-deluxe funny as Audrey. Sorry about the late reply. Darth Real Life has been kicking my butt.

[sollers]

As a Brit who saw the show first time round, I may be able to contribute some enlightenment.

The English religious experience, particularly in the past, is an odd thing. Posh people were Church of England and attended church (the term "Anglican" had complicated connotations) not so much because of what they believed but who they were; non-posh people would be assumed to be non-conformist (Methodist or Baptist for the most part) and attended chapel and were somewhat more concerned with belief. The class association could be seen from the fact that in some areas, if a miner, for example, was promoted to foreman, he would stop going to chapel and go to church instead. Attendance was seen mostly in terms of "what one does" and "setting an example", so for a long time in rural areas it was taken for granted that anyone over a certain income would attend the local church.

It's a long time since I saw it and I can't remember what gave me that impression but I definitely had the feeling that he was Jewish. It must have been something specific as all the Czechs I was acquainted with (post War Displaced Persons) were Catholic.

[raincitygirl]

Fascinating. The social aspect of it makes a lot more sense now. Thank you, and sorry about the late reply. Darth Real Life has been kicking my butt.