Required family viewing, back in the early 90s, the DVDs of this classic series are utterly addictive; however, watching the episodes back-to-back reveals whacking great plot holes, and plenty of story lines that are dropped, forgotten and never mentioned again.
Bea and Evie Eliott are magnificently played by Stella Gonet and Louise Lombard, with a sterling cast around them. The costumes are glorious, as you;d expect; however, there are some occasions when it would have been great to have seen a little more of them. The 1920s atmos is very believable and evocative.
As the series wore on, I found Miss Evie to be rather unsympathetic. Falling in love with every unsuitable, rake, cad, bounder and married man who would even cast a glance at her, Miss Evie somehow ends up proposing marriage to someone who seems little more than a professional freeloader. Worse, the proposal comes just minutes after he has drunkenly torn her dress. Far from being a series full of empowering roles for women, The House of Eliott shows Miss Evie to be in dire need of a man in her life, and frequently ignoring her professional responsibilities in order to achieve this.
Miss Bea's relationship with Jack goes through endless ups-and-downs, and there are some episodes where I found myself timing their scenes together to work out an average of how long they could be on screen without shouting. Miss Bea is more likable than Miss Evie, but prone to being a bit controlling.
In the workroom, characters such as Joseph, Tilly, Madge, Agnes and Betty provide plenty of Chirpy Cockernee Fun. Interestingly, the third and final series concentrates on the personal lives of the staff far more than the first two series had done. The story of Tilly and Norman's baby is quite absorbing, along with Madge's domestic problems and Agnes's urge to sing in music hall. All of this is rather more interesting than the same-old-same-old that the Eliotts seem to be going through: more marital strife to Miss Bea, and more random copping off for Miss Evie. There is so much going on in the third series that too much is left unresolved. To be honest, I would much rather have done without some of the dreary romantic stuff with Miss Evie and Daniel, in order to explore Madge and Charles's relationship, or see a bit more of Katya.
All along the way, there are plenty of moustache-twirling baddies desperate to derail the plucky heroines' attempts at business. From series one's is-he or isn't-he step brother, through boo-hiss Mr Saroyan in series two, and Grace Keeble in series three (not a baddie, really, just driven to frustration and resentment by Miss Evie's appalling behaviour), it's all enormous fun to watch.
Endless Countesses, Duchesses and the like; plenty of comedy French designers; lots of scandal; terrible employment practices ... The House of Eliott has it all. Everything feels rushed and hurried, nothing has long-lasting repercussions, stories and characters are cast aside and forgotten as if they never existed.
This series left me yelling at the TV in frustration and annoyance from time to time, but is never less than enjoyable. It's all so daft that French and Saunders really didn't need to put much effort into their legendary, priceless parody, The House of Idiot.
