Some evenings already watching from time to time a series that my wife is following...
As ever thrilled by the sheer professionalism and art of the British productions...thinking if that will be not awarded by the public...
After a quick research as ever in wiki found:
"Call the Midwife"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_the_Midwife
And yes now I see that "Downton Abbey" is also somewhere airing on our local Belgian TV network...not sure if I will have time for that too...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downton_Abbey


The preferences according to IMDB...
http://www.imdb.com/search/title?countries=gb&sort=moviemeter&title_type=tv_series

"Downton Abbey" on place 2
"Call the Midwife" on place 22

I see that "Keeping up appearances" is in the list too, as "On the busses" and "Fawlty Towers","Alloo, Alloo"...
That said my "preferences" say perhaps more on "my" personnality than anything else...

For instance I prefered "To the Manor Born" much more than "Are you being served"...

Kind regards to every one, Paul.

Paul - you may be interested to learn that "On the buses" was filmed at and around the Wood Green depot of the Eastern National Omnibus Company. For much of that time I was employed by them as a conductor.

Gilgamesh of Uruk wrote:

Paul - you may be interested to learn that "On the buses" was filmed at and around the Wood Green depot of the Eastern National Omnibus Company. For much of that time I was employed by them as a conductor.

Gil, you don't believe it, but for some reason, I don't know how (perhaps from vague rememberings of utterings from you on the old BBC board), I saw you as a computer specialist, working day in day out in the middle of a big room together with a lot of other colleagues...   not that conductor on the buses isn't an honourful profession too...and perhaps even more varied and social than that computerwork...
I apart from my student time as help of bricklayers, my whole "industrial" life in the paint department of a multinational of agricultural machinery, where there was a lot of variation. But besides that, after my hours, a lot of renewing of old buldings for family or to let them for hire to earn a little something "en plus"...

Your friend, Paul.

Paul - for the last 40 years of my working life, you are quite correct - but before qualifying as a geek, I worked as a sewing machine assembler, a Naval Officer, a lab technician, a bar man, and a postman as well as a conductor. During my university years (I went to uni as a mature student) I was a security guard and a supermarket baker.

Gil, for the people of the "Island" it are perhaps all common words but I had to seek for "geek"...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geek
And yes I saw on first sight the Dutch word "gek" therein and see the etymology mentions the Dutch word "gek" and the German word "geck"...
We say also in Dutch about someone "possessed" by computers, a "computergek"...we say also "computerfreak"...

With esteem for your colourful career, Paul.

Didn't know whether to put this here or on Downton Abbey thread.

I was given for Christmas the boxed set of the 1970s series Upstairs Downstairs. I only watched a couple of episodes back then - I was young and had better things to do than watch television - so I was unaware of how good the London Weekend TV series had been.  I think the present was meant as a joke, as my friends know how much I loathed DA: it has proved to be, however, a really appropriate and much appreciated gift.

Having nearly finished Upstairs Downstairs, I feel I must say how much I have enjoyed it. So much better than Downton. The scripts - written by some very reputable writers - were intelligent and informed, and the characters so much more realistic. Presentation of class problems was really fair, and some of the issues explored (eg homosexuality, women's position in society, use of cocaine) surprisingly honest. The chaos and confusion and social breakdown in the UK in the early 1970s - when the series was first aired - all very similar to the social meltdown in England post-WW1.

I loved Up/Downstairs and it was on when I had a couple of wee children so wasn't going out a lot. It always seemed to chime quite closely to the stories that Great Aunt Sadie and her butler friends used to tell about the goings-on in Buck House and other residences of the great and the not so good but rather less lurid.

Funnily enough I have never got in to Upstairs Downstairs or Downton Abbey although (conversely) I remember thoroughly enjoying NBC's 1979 miniseries Backstairs at the White House which looked at the lives of the various U.S. presidential families during the first half of the 20th century as seen through the eyes of the domestic staff at the famous Washington residence.

There was an utterly forgettable spinoff cum sequel to Upstairs Downstairs called "Thomas & Sarah".