Upstairs and Downstairs: British Costume Drama Television from The Forsyte Saga to Downton Abbey

Before Christmas I received my copy of Upstairs and Downstairs: British Costume Drama Television from The Forsyte Saga to Downton Abbey edited by James Leggott and Julie Anne Taddeo. True to form, I haven't yet managed to dip into the rest of the collection, though expect a review of some sort when I eventually get time to enjoy it. My essay is in the third section, entitled "Homosexual Lives: Representation and Reinterpretation in Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton Abbey" which examines the characters of Alfred Harris in Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton's Thomas Barrow.

Part I: Approaches to the Costume Drama

1. Pageantry and Populism, Democratization and Dissent: The Forgotten 1970s — Claire Monk

2. History’s Drama: Narrative Space in “Golden Age” British Television Drama — Tom Bragg

3. “It’s not clever, it’s not funny, and it’s not period!”: Costume Comedy and British Television — James Leggott

4. “It is but a glimpse of the world of fashion”: British Costume Drama, Dickens, and Serialization — Marc Napolitano

5. Never-Ending Stories?: The Paradise and the Period Drama Series — Benjamin Poore

6. Epistolarity and Masculinity in Andrew Davies’s Trollope Adaptations — Ellen Moody

7. “What Are We Going to Do with Uncle Arthur?”: Music in the British Serialized Period Drama — Karen Beth Strovas and Scott M Strovas

Part II: The Costume Drama, History, and Heritage

8. British Historical Drama and the Middle Ages — Andrew B. R. Elliott

9. Desacralizing the Icon: Elizabeth I on Television — Sabrina Alcorn Baron

10. “It’s not the navy-we don’t stand back to stand upwards”: The Onedin Line and the Changing Waters of British Maritime Identity — Mark Fryers

11. Good-Bye to All That: Piece of Cake, Danger UXB, and the Second World War — A. Bowdoin Van Riper

12. Upstairs, Downstairs (2010-2012) and Narratives of Domestic and Foreign Appeasement — Giselle Bastin

13. New Developments in Heritage: The Recent Dark Side of Downton “Downer” Abbey — Katherine Byrne

14. Experimentation and Postheritage in Contemporary TV Drama: Parade’s End — Stella Hockenhull

Part III: The Costume Drama, Sexual Politics, and Fandom

15. “Why don’t you take her?”: Rape in the Poldark Narrative — Julie Anne Taddeo

16. The Imaginative Power of Downton Abbey Fan Fiction — Andrea Schmidt

17. This Wonderful Commercial Machine: Gender, Class, and the Pleasures and Spectacle of Shopping in The Paradise and Mr. Selfridge — Andrea Wright

18. Taking a Pregnant Pause: Interrogating the Feminist Potential of Call the Midwife — Louise FitzGerald

19. Homosexual Lives: Representation and Reinterpretation in Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton Abbey — Lucy Brown

20. Troubled by Violence: Transnational Complexity and the Critique of Masculinity in Ripper Street — Elke Weissmann