Mr Selfridge season 1 ends

The series on the creation of the Selfridge Store in Oxford Street is more rooted in fact although it also follows in the tradition of Upstairs and Downstairs and Downton Abbey. I previously introduced this ten week series recounting my own experience of the store and of departmental stores in Croydon where I was born and spent my childhood close by.

 

According to Wikipedia the creator of the enterprise started work at 14 he made his way to become a partner in the department store of Marshal Field in Chicago where he is said to have originated the Christmas Sale and x shopping days left to Christmas as well as the customer is always right. He married well and indeed it is argued that his wife was his backbone with his life rapidly deteriorated after her death. He grew up without a father which is an important factor and his mother lived with him for the greater part of his life until her death.

 

Coming to London on holiday with his wife he realised there was a great opportunity for an American style store. He purchased the buildings in Oxford Street before demolition and having the store purpose built to meet his purpose. His reported to have spent £400000 of his money. However in the TV series he is dependent on a financial backer who pulls out and on another backer introduced to him by an aristocratic married women socialite with a young lover and lots of good connections.

 

In the BBC production his wife was first portrayed as the responsible mother of his four children rather than a force behind the business. She is concerned at the business risks he takes and appears to accept that he takes up with young women but discretely and always returns to her and the family. In this instance he becomes infatuated with an actress who he employs to give publicity to the store and sets up with a property in St John’s Wood. She sees herself as the second Mrs Selfridge and when he decides to drop her she confronts his wife at the family home and attempts to commit suicide. She sets on a new course to become a serious actress with the help of Frank, the former editor of a newspaper drinking and gambling companion of Selfridge who when he loses his job turns to Selfridge for help unfortunately on a bad day and is turned away. Frank who always fancied the actress provides help in the rewriting of the play.

 

However Mrs Selfridge is also not the selfless woman initially presented when she meets an artist painter on a visit to a gallery and agrees to sit for him to create a portrait for her husband.  He is unaware who she is and becomes infatuated with her. She is attracted and considers responding to his advances but her upbringing makes her hold back. He retaliates by becoming acquainted with their eighteen year old daughter who with the help of Lady May comes out to London Society.  Selfridges realises that his wife and developed strong feelings and remains attracted and tempted. She considers taking her family including the eldest daughter back to America and Chicago.

 

Through the help of Lady May, King George decides to make his first visit to a store and comes for an evening shop complete with cash. He meets Mrs Selfridge and invites the couple to spend a weekend with him at Sandringham and we have seen what this could mean in the interpretation of the King by Poliakoff. Lady May then passes on the request of the King that that the Selfridges, his mother and eldest daughter should attend the opening of the new play, a satire, in which Selfridge’s mistress is the star. The play is a great attack on Selfridge his way of life and that of Lady, whose husband lives in the country while she lives in town. It is a great humiliation which result in their daughter realising what had been going on. It is he last straw for Mrs Selfridge who takes the children back to America shortly afterwards leaving Selfridge alone in London with his mother. In real life Mrs Selfridge died prematurely and Selfridge went on to become a man about town with several mistresses although he never remarried.

 

Playing Don Juan is not the only flaw in the man. He has dismissed one of the 1300 staff who stole medicines for her sick mother who dies. She is met by one of the other staff, a gentle hearted young woman while taking tea in a cafe adjacent to the store. She appeals to the head of staff to give the woman a reference but when approaches Selfridges he is refused and the woman then throws herself in front of a tube train leaving a letter to Selfridge not blaming him and saying that she is going to join her mother. The suicide which led to a number of store staff arriving late took place on the day Shackleton gives a talk at the store. His theme was about team work and he importance of acting and not putting the lives of others before ambition and this appears to have a positive affect on Selfridge, a man who intends well but lacks self control and relies on others. 

 

One of these is the stuffy disciplinarian head of staff but who also leads a double life. His wife has been an invalid for a number of years and at least once a week he stayed over with one of the departmental heads at the store and who he has been with for many years before this. When his wife dies she has the expectation they will marry but his first reaction is to insist on a temporary break. He then is taken with the young woman who appealed to him to give the sacked woman a reference. He asks her to marry keeping the engagement secret until he has opportunity to tell his former mistress. When she learns she is devastated and is even more shocked when he suggests that they should continue their previously illicit relationship. She has already agreed to attend a meeting of the suffragettes and consoles herself with this new involvement.

 

She has been invited to join the suffragettes by another head of department who shares the front of store one with perfume and cosmetics, a feature with Selfridge introduced from Paris and is now a common feature of all stores along with accessories. This brings me a senior assistant working for accessories. I previously reported that Selfridge on visiting another store in London had noted that the goods were not on display but kept in cupboards and drawers to prevent theft. He had persuaded a young assistant to show him all the gloves which led her to be sacked and following the announcement of staffing for his new store she had successfully approached him for a job, visiting his home.

 

She lives with her brother a rather weak young man who allows himself to be bullied by their father who becomes violent when drunk. They have moved away in secret to get away from him and she gets him a job in the store and packaging department. When the father returns and persuades her left him stay and then returns to his old ways, gets drunk and visits the store it is Selfridge who intervenes and buys him off to stay away.

 

She is courted by a waiter with ambition to own his own restaurant. He is sidetracked by being required to provide personal services for Lady May and who offers to fund his restaurant if he continues to meet her needs. She is a woman partial to young men but has grown tired of her previous attachment and his gambling debts.

 

Meanwhile the senior assistant has also developed her own love interest. She has caught the eye professionally of the window designer and close friend of Selfridge, a Frenchman who in turn has failed to capture the attention of a close friend and another creative designer who moves to New York. It was inevitable that the senior assistant and window designer should have an affair which continues until the head of the Perfume department finds out about the relationship and warns the senior assistant that they cannot afford to have relationships and remain employed as the store had a policy of not hiring married women, a custom which most enterprises also followed.

 

When the French woman returns and persuades him to go to New York the assistant and the waiter get back together as he has broken off with Lady May when he finds out she has no intention of financing the restaurant. It is the waiter who also prevents her brother being arrested and sack as eh unwittingly has become part of scam where goods ordered for the firm and resold elsewhere by staff, he takes a shine to a female assistant who eventually agrees to go out with him to the pictures. The series ends at Selfridge now alone finds the young man still working late at night and encourages him by saying that he started out in the same way. The young man comments that Selfridge has everything including his fine family laving Selfridge to rue his fate.

 

The last word is not for Selfridge but for the great Lady May. A suffrage sponsor, a collector of adorable young men, she has advanced the cause of Selfridge, his wife and his daughter. She is also the butt of the new satirical play but we suspect she will survive better then Selfridge. No doubt we shall find out more when the series returns.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dancing on the Edge

The interesting and intriguing series Dancing on the Edge came to an end a week ago with the promise of an epilogue interview the purpose of which was not clear and which was shown on Sunday evening. When the series commenced I was not sure where it was going in terms of an encounter with one of central London Masonic lodges for the aristocracy, the rich and the politically powerful based in a hotel, or why the series included a son of King George as well as appearances from himself. King George who also appears in the last episode of ten in the Series on the opening of Selfridges   store in London which also ended on Sunday,

 

Dancing on the Edge is written by Stephen Poliakoff whose work is always interesting and some times controversial and this is his first TV production for over five years. I was attracted by the advance publicity that at its core was to be a Jazz band but this proved to be a sideshow for his exploration of the role of the Masons in British Society before the Second World War and the extent of racism against Jews and non white people. Although historical for the generation of today the work is a contemporary one for me and is likely to prove a commentary on “Society” today in much the same way Selfridges also had several stings, especially in the last trio of episodes and where the involvement of Royalty was have a bearing on the outcome.

 

Stanley Mitchell  Matthew Goode) is a creative journalist editor (with a  typing assistant who he beds called Rosie) for the Musical Express where he appears to live most of the time although he has a home with his working class single parent  mother. I used to buy the New Musical Express in the late 1950’s along with Melody Maker, two weekly papers which published information on Jazz. The NME was created only in 1952. I am sure the NME will have enjoyed the publicity whereas Royalty and the Masons will not and it is interesting the limited extent to which there is mention in Wikipedia article which in several respect and unusually, is a travesty of this richly textured work

 

The young editor catches only the end of the set of a black jazz swing band and suggests that with his help he can get them into the big time especially if they employ a singer. They get two, friends, one pretty Billy Holiday looking, the other not unattractive but with a bulkier red hot mama frame. This has significance!

 

Stanley gets them a job with a posh London hotel which tends to attract elderly conventional customers who have no experience or interest in jazz or contact with black men before. The deal is that the band will bring a new generation much like the position of the Tory Party today, where at Eastleigh the Party has only a hundred elderly members or the Catholic Church which elected a South American Argentinean of Italian parents as Pope.

 

When the band performs one evening they please a table of aristocrats. The most influential appears to be Arthur Donaldson a wealthy man played by Anthony Head who develops into a treacherous and dangerous man who has two young children with him who he claims are a nephew and niece but the implication is that he is a paedophile and they are orphans. One of his friends is a son of King George.

 

Also at the table are a brother and sister whose parents are anti Jewish and racists. The young man played by Julian Luscombe (Tom Hughes) appears a weak, emotionally disturbed and dependent on his sister Pamela (Joanna Vanderham) who appears to take an interest in Stanley. Sarah is the English born daughter of a Russian immigrant who is an amateur artistic photographer and takes an interest in the piano playing band leader Louis Lester (Chiswetel Ejiofor) English born but assumed to be American whose mother worked for a succession of rich families and became devout Christian. He obtained work on ocean liners which in additional episode provided him the opportunity to listen to the lives of the worldly that carried on as if he was not here. The band is managed by another English born man who lived in the USA for many years and where there is an arrest warrant. Julian is a kind of assistant to an American tycoon who uses the hotel as his UK base Walter Masterson (John Goodman), one of the richest men in the world.

 

The band is only given a short term contract at the hotel until asked to play at a Garden Party at the home of Walter although the guests although the small number of guests view the band at a distance in the house but where they emerge one of the party is a son of the King who plays with the band and takes an interest in the lead singer lead singer Jesse. When the Prince visits the band at the hotel they are made, helped by the publicity given to the band in the Music Paper.

 

The band are given a long term contract and allowed to use musician’s quarters at the hotel and with the increasing attention the singers are allowed to use the hotel main entrance. Louis helps out John Goodman when a young aristocratic woman is found battered in his suite. Goodman takes up the leading members of the band and invites them on a picnic which takes place using a private train which appears to have the freedom of the railway and which takes them to the country home of Lady Lavinia Cremone played by Jacqueline Bisset, (who also has a suite at the Imperial), and is also a fan of the Musical Express which she has in bound copies because of her love of Jazz but is now a recluse following the death of her two sons in the Great War. She thinks the band and singer great when they play for her and is it she who arranges for a BBC big wig to listen to the band in the original Jazz cellar which he attends reluctantly until finding a Prince present.

 

The band then becomes internationally famous and makes records after the BBC do a live broadcast from the hotel in the presence of Royalty. The band is asked to play at a service dinner at a regimental headquarters in the presence of the King. The King dances with the wife of the commanding officer who realises she will be expected to sleep with the King for the night. Meanwhile the world of Louis is about to fall apart.

 

After performing the service for Goodman Louis and Stanley had been shown a peep hole at the hotel by Julian enabled them to see members of one of the London Masonic Lodges for the powerful and rich in the basement of the hotel. Goodman and Walter are also members.  It was not immediately clear the significance which this reference to the Masons was going to have in the series. The development of a sexual relationship between Louis and Sarah and between Matthew and Pamela is also unclear in its significance and I remain unsure how Sarah became part of this circle of the aristocracy and the super rich.

 

Stanley also develops a positive friendship with Lady Cremone who he interviews and places on the front cover. Matthew and Goodman also develop a friendship.

 

Julian coverts Jesse and persuades her to pretend she is unwell and not to attend the dinner at which the King will be present because he has arranged for her to meet a Hollywood film producer. Louis is concerned about the situation and returns early from the dinner at which the second singer comes to the fore and impresses.

Jesse joins Julian, Pamela and Sarah at the hotel, seemingly quickly recovered and Julian and she go upstairs. Louis then finds Jesse battered and close to death and is sure as we the audience that Julian is at the end of the corridor. Julian departs taking leave of his sister late to join Goodman in Paris. The nation is shocked by what happens and one possible avenue being followed by the police is a fan some of whom had commenced to follow her and they now vigil outside the hospital.

 

Louis is interviewed by the police and is not regarded as a suspect. He tells them of his concerns about Julian however when the police check and report back that there are two witnesses who saw Julian on the scheduled boat train and  he has his passport appropriately stamped.

 

The band plays at the hotel at Christmas before a party   from the German Embassy who walks out on seeing that the band is Black. Julian and Stanley arrange for the band to play at German Embassy which causes another walk out. The band is invited to play for the Mason’s at the Imperial Hotel. Louis discovers that the two witness who said they had seen Julian on the train ferry are members of the Lodge. It later emerges that Goodman had arranged for his private plane to get Julian to Paris and that officials are assisting in the cover up. Why Goodman went to Paris by the boat train is therefore a mystery or perhaps my memory of this aspect is faulty.

 

The performance before the Masons ends quickly with the news of the attempt on the life of the USA president. Goodman takes the party to premises which he has acquired for the expansion of the Musical Express to listen to a long wave radio. He has suddenly shown great interest in the magazine offering Matthew the Editorship at a fantastic salary, with Sarah the professional photographer which he sees as the way forward. He also persuades Lady Cremone to become his agent in charge. The current owner had brought in a co editor to develop the paper to cover radio and other technological developments. He is also to feature in the new enterprise as a kind of Chief Executive. Everyone is being well paid to work for Goodman except Pamela, something which she comments on.

 

New Year is spent back at the estate of Lady Cremone and in the village which is on the estate. Julian reappears explaining that he has been in France developing the idea to create a business selling British made Cheeses. Louis tells Sarah of his concerns about Julian which she disregards.  Goodman who refers to Julian as the son he never had  and is moving back full time to the USA and wants Julian to be with him.  Julian’s fascist mother thinks this is a great idea but Julian is concerned about losing the influence of sister. She spent Christmas day with Stanley at the home of is mother.

 

When Jesse who seemed to be recovering and regaining consciousness has a relapse and dies, Louis is wanted by the Police for her murder, goes on the run and finds that everyone turns against him.  Not only does he band lose it contract at the hotel but the American owners visit but want to sell the property for the site to be converted into apartments. The Masons also look for another hotel.  Louis goes to see Arthur who promises help through his solicitor. However Arthur emerges in his true colours as he has contacted the police. Arthur had previously offered to help the band’s manager establish his British status thus avoiding extradition to the USA but fails suggesting he wanted the manager out of the way to be able to exercise greater influence over the band, Louis and the female singers

 

Louis gets away and comes to Stanley for help who hides him with suburban relatives where he is joined by Sarah about whom he is suspicious. Goodman has posted a large reward for the capture of Louis and used the press to ensure that everyone is on the lookout for him. Lady Cremone who with everyone else turns her back on Louis begins to query why Goodman has adopted such an aggressive position. Stanley and Sarah also begin to realise that something more sinister is to hand but all appear to accept that Julian with his alibi had nothing to do with the assault and death of Jesse.

 

Louis is still wearing his DJ and therefore conspicuous and leaving Stanley’s relatives because neighbours have called him police they use the premises of a bowling club to change into clothes brought by Sarah and Stanley then takes Louis to hide at the Jazz club where the band originally played above which there is a dance studio. The owner manager is reluctant to provide sanctuary especially as she has a function.

 

An elaborate plan is devised for the band including its singer to take boat train to France with the help of money from Pamela and Sarah. One problem is that the second singer does not have a passport. Louis nevertheless makes his escape to France and we later learn that he has made his way to Marseilles where is able to earn living from his music. Lady Cremone saves the hotel and has the rest of the band on contract to play a set in which the music of Jesse is kept alive. The Musical Express returns to its original premises with Stanley in charge once again.

 

Julian fails to make his Rendezvous with Goodman to go to America and takes a hand gin from his parent’s home and goes to the home of Arthur where it appears he is going to kill the man although why is not clear. Arthur takes him to meet Goodman at a train station where again it looks as if Julian intends to kill both of them. Instead he gives a confession to waitress and commits suicide. Arthur and Goodman quickly leave.  Sarah was force to reveal the location of Louis blackmailed by the British Secret Service who threatens to revoke her father’s permission to reside in the UK. She now says she will find Louis.

 

The postscript episode comprises the incomplete interview between Stanley and Louis and which suggests a follow up series. Louis has told Stanley to interview Jesse before her death) and she talks of fan mail she has been getting and that some of it is quite weird although the significance of this is unclear.

 

Louis then tells   the story that he was telephoned by the wife of a friend of Pamela who needed to tell him something, although why she needed to tell him is not clear. Her husband is one of those belonging to the Masonic Lodge he had spied on with Louis. She tells of another lodge at another hotel much grander, where there was one member who foretold of the great crash and advised members on how to survive the happening but they had largely ignored him. He had then warned of the Second World War. Louis had told Stanley about this before his flight to France making him promise not print anything because his informant appeared frightened of her husband. It was not clear to me if she was the same young woman who Louis had rescued from Goodman’s apartment or someone different. Stanley says he intends to follow this up.

 

Poliakoff has written the series full of implied conspiracies with the ability of the rich and powerful to operate outside the law and with the assistance of the law and the state to then cover up and if necessary frame others. He ahs also set the series in such a way as to imply real life events. I once heard a conversation on a flight to Gibraltar in which two worldly and educated men stated that forces within the USA had been responsible for 9/11. This series had a similar feel and a host of inanswered questions and issues.