On a warm summer day in 2009, I was sitting on the screen porch of my house in Kennebunkport, Maine, reading an American novel, and falling asleep. My phone rang with a call from Laura Mackie, the head of drama at ITV, the largest commercial network in the U.K. She often tips me off to new British series that I might be interested in for Masterpiece. We chat, catch up.
“Rebecca, do you know Julian Fellowes?” she asks.
Just as a writer, I say: Gosford Park? Mary Poppins on Broadway? I know his work, but not him.
I think he’s an actor as well.
She tells me about an upcoming miniseries he’s written that she’s very excited about: a family saga set on a spectacular country estate, early 1900s; an American heiress whose money keeps things afloat; beautiful frocks; a downstairs “family” of complicated servants. She tells me directly that she thinks it’s going to be very good, and that the production needs Masterpiece co-production money to fill the financing gap. I’ve known and liked Laura for years. She has good taste and very savvy television judgment.
I listen, and then I think to myself that the project sounds a lot like a combination of Edith Wharton’s The Buccaneers, which we’d already done in 1995, and Upstairs, Downstairs, of which we’d aired sixty-eight episodes from 1971 to 1975, and which we’re about to remake with the BBC. Does Masterpiece really need another aristocratic-family-charming-servant miniseries at this point?
Probably not.
I tell Laura, no thanks. We chat about the London weather, and I go back to my book.
I’ve been very, very lucky in my career, in spite of myself.