On The House Of Eliott

After coming to the finale of Flambards, I needed a new old historical TV series. Almost on cue, all three series of Sunday night dressmaking drama The House Of Eliott popped up to stream on ITVX, so in I have plunged.

I happened to mention this in passing on Twitter/X and got one of those surprising reactions when something twangs a chord that you didn’t anticipate - a thousand plus likes, and lots of replies.

I hadn’t seen it since transmission, which was a sobering 33 years ago. My memory of it, like that of many of my correspondents, has been coloured by French and Saunders’s spoof The House Of Idiot. It’s very, very hard to efface Idiot from Eliott - the penny farthing, the story repetition, the ‘Tea? The hot drink?’-style dialogue, the ever-so-umble and speak-as-I-find servants, the clanging attempts at social comment, ‘Jaaack!’

I’m told that French and Saunders were addicted to watching Eliott being recorded on the ring main at TV Centre, the feed that piped whatever was in the studios that day to all the TVs in the building. They were mesmerised by its magnificent awfulness.

And so was I, back then and again now. I’ve only copped the first episode, and it was as gloriously daft as I recalled. Every plot point is signalled a good ten minutes in advance, with the sisters spending the first third of the opener basically hooting ‘We’re rich, we’re rich, hurrah, we have tons of money and nothing can possibly go wrong!’ until, to nobody’s surprise but their own, they discover that their rotten old dead dad has left them with nothing. It takes Bea the entire episode to figure out that Daddy was secretly whooping it up with fast women, something apparent to the slowest viewer in the second scene.

It’s quite a shock to go from the plotting of Flambards, which you don’t even notice, to the groaning schematic superstructure of Eliot. In ep 1, Jobless Evie is walking home and just happens to bump into a fainting woman, who just happens to be being visited by a freelance social campaigner, who just happens to be the brother of a society photographer who needs a secretary. Evie has apparently never noticed the poor or seen how they live before this day, which slams the tin hat on it.

Writer Jill Hyem was one of the main thrusts behind Tenko, which has a toughness and vitality not present here. But perhaps more pertinently she was also a mainstay of Radio 2’s wildly popular daytime soap Waggoners Walk, which was canned in 1980 despite enormous figures. Victoria Wood fingered Waggoners Walk as the greatest influence on Acorn Antiques. My mum was a devoted listener of Waggoners and often found it hilarious in a way I didn’t quite understand as I grew up. It was only in its last throes that I twigged how innocently camp it was - full of posh-voiced women saying things like ‘You haven’t the guts, Anthony’ or ‘I have to go now, I left the twins by the swings’, and masterful men dropping lines like ‘I’m not creating obstacles Lynne’ or ‘ye gods, the February accounts!’

Many other series have this creaking artificiality but, particularly nowadays, it’s hidden by production value that masks the chinks. Eliot is interesting because it was made at a very specific point in the technical history of TV. It was recorded on 1” outside broadcast videotape - the final non-soap to be made on tape by the BBC - and like many other productions of the time, that medium makes it look flat, washed-out and kills any atmosphere stone dead. The 1920 street scenes, filled with extras and period vehicles, look like … streets in 1991 filled with extras and period vehicles. The floor manager might as well be in shot (something noticed by French and Saunders). As with the almost contemporaneous BBC Narnia or Sylvester McCoy Doctor Who, you feel like you’re watching a student video project of the actual filming. There is no room to hide any flaws.

Let’s show off these beautiful garments to their best advantage using cheap 80s camcorder tape

Does any of this matter? No. Because its very artlessness is a joy, the same joy you get cramming down a family bar of chocolate all by yourself. This is television that loves you and asks only that you love it, which is sorely missed. I’m happy to be back in the world of the Eliott sisters.