Is there such a thing as too much period drama from the BBC? Probably not. Certainly there will be a lot of happy fans now that the popular 1976 series The Duchess of Duke Street has made its way onto DVD. This first series (of two) introduces us to Louisa Leyton (Gemma Jones), a cook with aspirations to become the very best in London. The ensemble production, with Jones' performance at the center, gives us an in-depth look at life in turn-of-the-century England, with its parallel worlds of masters and servants, and just a few people who dared to stake out territory in the middle.

With fifteen episodes of nearly an hour apiece, The Duchess of Duke Street: Series 1 certainly puts us right in the middle of our protagonist's life. The first episode has Louisa working her way up in the world by becoming an assistant cook in an important household, and in the next few episodes she swiftly moves up the ladder to become an important, sought-after cook. The focus is thus very quickly on Louisa as part of the world of the rich and powerful, rather than Louisa as the struggling dreamer.

That's both the strength and the weakness of the series: you'll like the series if you enjoy being immersed in Louisa Leyton's Edwardian world, with its attention to her relationships and social adventures. But since the series jumps right into things, we're given very little of the lead-in. To me, the most interesting part of the entire series was Louisa's humble beginnings and her mistakes as she started to learn the ropes... but that's only a tiny fraction of the series as a whole. I think the series would have been a lot better if we'd gotten to know Louisa while she was still a scullery maid with big dreams, and if the series had spent more time on her rise upward, rather than glossing over it relatively quickly to become more of a soap opera among the wealthy and powerful. The comparison I'd make is with the recent The House of Eliott (with fashion designers instead of cooks); that series works much better because it's much more about the journey to success, rather than the difficulties of navigating through social obstacles after achieving a certain degree of success.

In terms of production values, The Duchess of Duke Street has held up quite well. The nearly thirty-year-old series shows its age to a certain degree in the image quality, but the BBC's attention to details of period dress, housing, transportation, and furniture paid off: the series still looks like a window into the Edwardian period. In fact, with its loving attention to the details of the table, it sometimes feels like there's a documentary impulse behind the series as well.

Overall, The Duchess of Duke Street is well acted; Gemma Jones certainly gives a spirited performance as Louisa Leyton, and the secondary characters are generally handled in a satisfactory manner as well. While it didn't quite "click" with me, it's a reasonable choice for fans of British costume drama.

The DVD

The Duchess of Duke Street: Series 1 is very attractively packaged, with the five DVDs each in an ultra-slim case and the whole set in a stylish glossy paperboard slipcase. The design pleasingly evokes the Edwardian period that the show is set in rather than the 1970s when the show was made.

Video

The Duchess of Duke Street looks about as good as we might expect a British television show from 1976 to look, assuming that it's been treated with a modicum of care: it's quite watchable, but far from perfect. The image is clean for the most part (the outdoor scenes have some flaws, but the indoor scenes are free of any print flaws), and colors are muted but reasonably natural-looking. There's a slight brownish cast to the image as a whole, which is pretty typical of any 1970s production, but it's easy to get used to. More annoying is the very heavy edge enhancement, which leads to visible halos at times. Darker scenes tend to look a bit murky, but the better-lit scenes look fine, with relatively little noise or grain.

Audio

The Dolby 2.0 audio track does a good job of handling the dialogue in this series. When voices are raised, the sound is a little bit harsh, but for the most part, it sounds completely natural and quite clean.

Extras

Some text information is provided to fill in the background on the series. We get a biography of Rosa Lewis, the inspiration for the series, along with a sample menu. There's also information on the Edwardian period, cast filmographies, and a photo gallery.

Final thoughts

The Duchess of Duke Street: Series 1 is a competently handled British period drama, one that has held up quite well in the time since its original airing in 1976. While I didn't find the romantic and social ups and downs of the story to be particularly compelling, I can see that this is a series that's likely to appeal to viewers who enjoy historical fiction of this era. I'll give it a "recommended" if you've enjoyed similar series like Upstairs