To Serve Them All My Days
From Zanecorpwiki
A solid story that Anglophiles will eat up. It's the projection of idealized (though still realistic) characters into a "sharply real" post WWI Britain executed with skill and of course an endless sense of decorum and reserve. DVD
Summary
The only real problem is that the first episode deals with a lot of deep, interesting issues... very superficially. I really wanted more out of it. Dealing with WWI, class, and privilege, blue vs. white collar with a snap of the finger, silly.
After that, the show works much better. Smaller incidences, a boy missing, what kind of war memorial to put up, etc. No big issues.
Details and Notes
The story starts with David Powlett-Jones, the protagonist, being discharged from service in WWI. He's a shell shocked Welshman with proletariat sentiments seeking a job at an early 20th century British public school (which we would call a private boarding school). It's dynamite stuff and right off there's talk of confronting the social conceptions and challenging the assumptions of privilege. The problem is that we get through all that before the end of the first episode. The scale is horrendously off.
After that, it shifts dramatically. Each episode deals with a proper vignette scale bit with a little back story and character growth. There are big issues, but always with a personal focus. I believe even the first episode was intended to be personal, but it wasn't.
The pictures of early century British life are just delicious. I especially love the school's headmaster, Algy. He's the personification of everything that's best about Britain, unflappable, phlegmatic, affable, faithful, and warm. He's like a jolly Zen monk (except that he's a minister).
I wonder how the book is, because the TV series is really very neutral in terms of message. Though he's far from radical and integrates pretty easily into the highly classicist public school (meaning private for those in the US), he does have proletariat/socialist leanings. Primarily, however, he's open minded and rational and there are only a handful of instances--and always more or less justified--when he extemporizes on the plight of the working man. The first episode made me think there'd be a lot of "delving into class relations", but either it's been neutered out of the TV series or British sentiment is so understated I'm not detecting the radical elements that underly the narrative.
