Upstairs Downstairs, Series Two, BBC One

You remember Upstairs Downstairs – the lavish 2010 period drama-cum-soap based around servants and their masters that had the misfortune of not being named Downton Abbey. Making its entrance some three months after ITV’s series despite being filmed first, Upstairs played like the indignant, overshadowed elder sibling to Downton’s effervescent, effortlessly successful young upstart.

To add insult to injury, this second series limps onto our screens sans two of its central cast members – who also happen to be the women who created the series back in 1970. Actress Jean Marsh, who’s picked up an Emmy and two Golden Globe nominations over the years for her portrait of feisty maid Rose, suffered a stroke in October and will be absent until the fourth episode. Meanwhile Dame Eileen Atkins, aka the formidable Lady Maud Holland, declined to return for the second series. Her absence is explained by an off-screen death, while Alex Kingston has a go at filling her shoes as Lady Maud’s younger half-sister Dr Blanche Mottershead.

But it’s not just behind the scenes where things are looking grim. The new series finds us in 1938, the threat of war looming large over upstairs and downstairs alike. Diplomat Sir Hallam (Ed Stoppard) is having a particularly rough time of it: he’s wrapped up in peace negotiations with Germany, his wife Lady Agnes (Keeley Hawes, pictured right with Stoppard) is looking distinctly peaky after a near-miscarriage, and his aforementioned aunt (Kingston) is outstaying her welcome and showing a staggering lack of respect for his mother’s memory.

Unsurprisingly, it’s downstairs that provides the most compelling storyline, though in this episode there’s scant competition. After he takes the blame for the endearingly gormless Johnny’s (Nico Mirallegro) inadvertent monkey murder, it emerges that Pritchard (Adrian Scarborough) has a sizeable skeleton in his closet: he spent time in prison during World War One for refusing to fight. This makes for some reasonably well-executed tension with the rest of the servants – in particular Mr Amanjit (Art Malik, pictured below) – and Scarborough’s understated turn remains one of the series’ strongest assets.

There are no bad performances as such, but there’s a curiously stilted quality that the show just can’t seem to shake, while the dialogue meanders between uninspired and dimly cringe-inducing (Blanche’s “As we are in England, I suggest you make some tea” is a forced low point.) There are two promising additions to the downstairs contingent in the form of guileless kitchen maid Eunice (Ami Metcalf) and opinionated nursery maid Beryl (Laura Haddock), both of whom make more of an impression with their limited screen time than much of the longer-standing cast. That said, Hallam’s reunion in Germany with his wife’s reckless, newly Nazi-sympathising sister Lady Persephone (Claire Foy) left ajar one or two semi-intriguing doors.

There’s a pervasive atmosphere of dread thanks to the pre-wartime setting, which gives this second outing something of an advantage over the first – the everyday realities of collecting gas masks, or the gas-proof pram that looks unsettlingly like a coffin, leave a genuine chill. But writer Heidi Thomas seems to be leaning rather too heavily on the appeal of dramatic irony. This episode ends with a stay of execution in the form of an apparent peace announcement, and Eunice asks “Is it over?” Blanche responds with cryptic loftiness, “This is history, Eunice. It’s never over.” It’s the kind of portentous line that encompasses why Upstairs will remain the runner-up – in contrast to Downton’s twinkle-in-the-eye appeal, this is a series that remains determinedly blank-eyed and po-faced.

CLAIRE FOY’S CV

Little Dorrit (2008). “Dickens did just see her as homely, angelic and giving. I looked on her as a sort of a carer whose parent or child is ill. That made her believable in my head.”

Upstairs Downstairs (2010-12). Lady Persephone, posh little brown shirt based on the Hitler-obsessed Unity Mitford, tops herself in a dramatic exit from the second series.

The Night Watch (2011). Foy plays a troubled lesbian toy girl in an adaptation of Sarah Waters’ novel about heartache in the Blitz (pictured below with Anna Maxwell Martin)

Wreckers (2011). Foy is wife to Benedict Cumberbatch in fraught low-budget Fenland drama

The Promise (2011). In Peter Kosminsky’s epic historical drama, Foy plays Erin Matthews, an 18-year-old obsessed with investigating the story of the British soldiers serving in Palestine in the years before our ignominious exit.  “I just recognised quite a lot of things about me when I was her age.”

White Heat (2012). Foy is a feminist child of the Sixties who grows up to become Juliet Stevenson.

Hacks (2012). Guy Jenkin comedy inspired by the hacking scandal, in which Foy's feral tabloid editor Kate Loy is not remotely based on to Rebekah Brooks. A rare comic outing for an actress with natural funny bones.

Love, Love, Love (2012). In Mike Barlett’s played Foy played a child of a hippie baby boomer. “It’s the Philip Larkin thing: she really does believe her parents did fuck her up. I hope I’m not like she is when she’s 37." (Pictured, Foy with Victoria Hamilton)

Macbeth (2013). “Why does everyone think she’s so evil? My approach to every character is you essentially want to understand. They always have something they are fighting against. They have lost a baby and that’s the catalyst for everything.”

Wolf Hall (2015). Foy’s Anne Boleyn goes toe to toe with Mark Rylance and Damian Lewis.

The Crown (2016). Queen of all she surveys. Bring on series two.