Things have changed in the stately homes of England.
Servants are openly rude to those upstairs, those upstairs are openly sleazy with the servants and nobody can pay the heating bills.
Such is the unfortunate position of upstairs and downstairs at Hazelwood Manor, the setting for the third series of The Syndicate.
The British television drama series is written by Kay Mellor, who started out writing for Coronation Street.
Each series sees five members of a betting syndicate win the lottery.
The first series was set in a Leeds supermarket, the second in a public hospital in Bradford and the third in Hazelwood Manor, a crumbling stately home near Scarborough.
In each, the lottery win is soured for some by dark pasts and dramatic happenings.
Series three, on Sky's Vibe channel next Monday evening, begins with the lives of those in the manor before the big win.
Elizabeth Berrington (Paula in Stella) is Dawn Stevenson, who lives in the charming looking seaside town of Scarborough, but who sleeps through the alarm, has a recalcitrant daughter who wears her skirt too short, a husband with a car that won't start and a number of other problems ordinary folk are required to deal with.
She is late to work at Hazelwood, where the very excellent Lenny Henry is Godfrey, a gardener with Asperger syndrome who is fascinated with mathematics and develops theories on the most probable numbers for a lottery win.
Lord Hazelwood (Anthony Andrews from Brideshead Revisited) is forced to host American tourists, despite his ill-health and lack of money.
‘‘They only come because they think they're in an episode of Downton Abbey,'' he moans, cross-referentially.
Visiting Americans are not his only problem.
His stepson Spencer Cavendish (Sam Phillips) has sold the Bentley he has owned all his life, and when Spencer's not getting into financial trouble he's pashing off with the servant's daughter who wears her skirt too short.
Things are in a fine pickle.
But a trip to the dairy to pick up a lottery ticket comes up trumps.
But what will the downstairs crew do with their millions? What secrets are lurking in this newly rich milieu? Will someone go missing unexpectedly?
I'm not sure, probably heaps, and most definitely are the answers to those questions in what looks to be a very well-cast, well- acted and engaging show with a good twist on the stately manor theme.
I like.
As The People vs OJ Simpson continues to be an excellent dramatisation of that unfortunate crime and aftermath on SoHo, TV One is running a special on the crime tonight at 8.30pm.
Autopsy: The OJ Simpson Murder Case takes the autopsy report and forensic evidence to unravel what happened on that fateful night.
- Charles Loughrey
