NEW YORK (AP) — Julian Fellowes’ latest addictive series about English social classes kicks off with a
party. Mind you, not just any run-of-the mill, high society bash. "Belgravia" on Epix starts
with one of the most famous parties in history.
On June 15, 1815, the Duchess of Richmond threw a magnificent ball in Brussels for the Duke of
Wellington. It just happened to coincide on the very day that Napoleon’s troops stormed into Belgium.
Only days later, British forces — including many of the very aristocratic soldiers attending the ball —
would die battling Napoleon at Waterloo. "I liked the idea of starting the story off with that
incredibly glamorous, incredibly tragic event," says Fellowes, the man behind "Downtown
Abbey."
The story then jumps 25 years to Belgravia, a planned enclave of white townhouses with black railings in
a tony part of London. It was a planned city-within-a-city, built on marshland. "It’s a part of
London that’s it’s always fascinated me," Fellowes says.
Two families — one aristocratic and the other rising from the middle class — find out that they are
connected, for better or worse, by a baby conceived by the children of each family in those heady days
before Waterloo.
The show stars Tamsin Greig and Harriet Walter’ as the matriarchs of the two families, two grandmothers
defending the memories of their dead children and laying claim to the future of the grandchild whom they
have in common.
"I wanted to have these two women who came from very different powerbase. It wasn’t that one was
powerful and the other was not. It was they were both powerful, but they were powerful in different
ways," says Fellowes.
"I wanted them to have a common issue, a common interest, that would yoke them together against
their will," he adds. "And it seemed to me for them to share an illegitimate grandchild is a
good way to do that."
"Belgravia" is the latest drama from a writer who has created an award-winning career focusing
on key turning points in English history — the early 1930s of "Gosford Park," the end of the
Georgian era in "Vanity Fair," the early 1920s in "Downton Abbey" and, in a new
series now streamable, the 1870s with " The English Game."
"Jullian has such a passion for certain sections of history. He gets so involved in the details of
each and is therefore such a good storyteller — creates such a compelling narrative — that you’re drawn
through those slices of history," says Greig, who plays the middle class matriarch.
"Belgravia" first started life as a 2016 book by Fellowes, and he found it relatively easy to
adapt his own 400-page novel into a six-part TV series.
"By this stage of my life, I tend to write quite visually because so much of what I write is for
television or a big screen or the stage or whatever," he says. "And I sort of see these scenes
in my head and so I write them in that way."
Was Fellowes the screenwriter kind to Fellowes the book author? Not really, he admits. "I think you
have to sort of forget that you wrote it actually. You have to look at it fairly ruthlessly for the
characters that can be made better or the scenes that could be given a little extra frill."
The series has plenty of touches familiar to fans of Fellowes, including duplicitous ladies’ maids,
aristocratic arrogance, forbidden romances and grousing downstairs. But unlike "Downton
Abbey," which was set from 1912-26, the world of 1840s "Belgravia" is not about
aristocratic decay.
"’Downton,’ in many ways, is about the decline of the upper classes. Whereas this was actually not
about the decline of anything," Fellowes says.
"This booming new middle class had arrived and suddenly they were making and buying and weaving and
dealing in and trading in everything. And that seemed rather fun."
Fellowes calls the time "one of the first periods of where the warning shots were fired across the
bows of the old aristocracy." By the later part of the century, the middle classes would be running
the show.
Greig had never worked on a Fellowes project before and says she was instantly hooked by the script,
especially his vast well of compassion for all his characters.
"Each one is very well mapped out and he doesn’t judge any of them. They’ve all got a reason for the
things that they do," she says. "He combines his passion for different moments in history with
narratives that remind us that we’re human."
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Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits
