19 thoughts on “Frock Flicks Guide to Julian Fellowes

  1. Ooh, do I have a grudge against “From Time to Time”. Based on two of the fabulous “Green Knowe” books, it commits one of the worst sins of all. It’s BORING. Seriously, ghosts and architecture and curses and history and you make it BORING? Grrrrrrr…. waste of a cast.

      1. Yes, that film was dreadful! and if you’re thinking of starting the books, the first one, The Children of Green Knowe, is a good December read.

    1. I’m with you Gwyn. I love the books – still have a couple from childhood. A great cast was wasted on something that could have been so much more. PS. there’s an episode of Antiques Road Trip that includes a visit to Lucy Boston’s home – the inspiration for the books. Its story is fascinating in its own right, and her dtr in law, who still lives there, shows us around.

  2. I love Aristocrats and never realized he was in it. He was fairly OTT as the Duke but not in a bad way. Love Gosford Park as well.

  3. I actually kind of enjoyed him as Prinny in Pimpernel. I tend to grit my teeth when I see he’s involved in things (he’s such a Tory), but I’ve enjoyed some of them.

    1. At this point, I find Julian Fellowes’ involvement in a work to be a turn off. One work after another about the 1% makes him feel like a one trick pony.

      1. It does feel like his ability to capture the class system is diminishing, right? Gosford Park is still so great, Downton was very good, Doctor Thorne sounds terrible, Belgravia and Gilded Age are ho hum…

        1. I think that, contrary to Gosford Park, and now he has become really bankable his last productions downton included are aiming at a large family target and end to be very consensual and sadly not really realistic (=> upper class dreamland)

  4. I like his style, particularly in Downton Abbey and Crooked House. But my real favourite is Gosford Park. I don’t know why it’s so underrated and underwatched. Outside of costume-fans I rarely hear it discussed, and it really should! It’s brilliant!

  5. His episode of Young Indiana Jones is the one with the suffragette in London during WWI and it’s my favorite episode from that series. I rewatched it recently and Fellows as Churchill gets told off in a very satisfactory fashion by the heroine.

  6. I loved Gosford Park, but then I watched The Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir’s masterpiece from about 1939) and realized how much was lifted from that older, better work. There’s one scene in particular, where the servants are eating downstairs and discussing their employers, that is a verbatim translation of the same scene in French.

    Ditto Downton Abbey (ripping off Upstairs Downstairs) and Gilded Age (everything by Edith Wharton).

    Julian Fellowes Investigates is unintentionally hilarious. You’ve got a perfectly normal little poisoning or stabbing, and up pops Fellowes to ‘splain what you’ve just seen on screen with over-the-top language like “VIOLENT DEATH” and “ARSENIC.”

    My favorite role of his is not a frock flick, it’s Kilwillie, Richard Briers’ wacky neighbor in the early oughts Scottish soap Monarch of the Glen. Every episode was son and laird Archie MacDonald trying to save the estate from financial ruin while Richard and Julian dashed about the countryside filching barrels of whiskey or tossing cabers.

  7. The best comment on the man was a critic greeting the arrival of a new project with: “Julian Fellows has been typing again.”

  8. I didn’t realize that was Julian Fellowes as Churchill in The Young Indiana Chronicles – that was a formative show for me and for a long time that face was Churchill for me. How weird.

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