Fifty Years a Masterpiece
January tenth of this year marked the fiftieth anniversary of Masterpiece, no longer Theatre, but still Theatre in my heart. If you watched the "special" hosted by Alan Cumming you were probably just as baffled as I was that it was nothing more than an infomercial for their most recent seasons without touching on the glorious history and the wonderful shows they have aired over the past fifty years. Let's just do a really fast montage of the hosts to prove that it wasn't the biggest mistake of our lives firing Russell Baker, OK? Sigh. In fact the very touching tribute to Diana Rigg at the end of the second episode of All Creatures Great and Small this season was longer than the tribute to past hosts in a special about the show's history! My quibbles aside, Masterpiece didn't just change television, it changed me. It informed everything about me growing up. It was a touchstone, there every Sunday night, where I could get respite from the world and escape into a show before the onslaught of Monday morning. The theme music was used as the processional music for my eighth grade graduation. I have spent more hours than you can count going through shelves at used bookstores to find the old tie-in editions with the beautiful poster art that Mobil produced for each show. I learned about new shows wandering bookstores and seeing the newly released tie-ins for the upcoming season. I have found more favorite authors than I can count because of this show!
My mind was expanded by the informed introductions and the wonderful presentations that made me want to go out and learn more. To read, to absorb, to understand, and thus did I become an Anglophile... And this might have always been my destiny, because despite never coming clean I still think there's a good chance my parents named me after the Bellamy's daughter Elizabeth on Upstairs, Downstairs, that's how deep my connection to this show is. I was born to it! Which is why I can not, no I will not let this opportunity to celebrate Masterpiece pass! I am dedicating the next few months of my blog to Masterpiece, and seeing as I've basically dedicated a lot of my life to it this isn't that big a change or surprise. But there's some gaps in my viewing, you know from before I was born or shows I couldn't find and my library didn't have when I first went looking. So I'm going to take a little peak at each season of Masterpiece, including the current fifty-first season! There are several shows that were revolutionary and way before their time. And then there are other shows that are like coming home. And very famous shows that just took old stories and made them new again. I hope you'll join me in this trip down memory lane. Feel free to share your memories of your favorite shows, you can be sure I won't hold back on mine!
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