Feb 27, 2025
Shades of Darkness: The Lady's Maid's Bell (1.1, Granada, 1983)
"Who was Emma Saxon?"
"Oh, she were Mrs. Brympton's maid that was. She come first as sewing maid, in Mrs. Brympton's mother's time, and then when Mrs. Brympton married she left with her, as lady's maid then."
"What was she like?"
"No better walked the earth, my mistress loved her like a sister."
"No, I mean... what did she look like?"
"I'm no great hand at describing. And I believe my bread's rising."
#shades of darkness#the lady's maid's bell#classic tv#single play#horror tv#granada#1983#edith wharton#ken taylor#john glenister#joanna david#june brown#norma west#ian collier#charlotte mitchell#roger llewellyn#harry littlewood#diane whitley#clive duncan#malcolm raeburn#bernard atha#alick hayes#SoD was an anthology of period ghost story adaptations that arrived as one short series in '83 followed by a couple of feature length#successors a few years later. Granada had survived the franchise review of 1980 and were rapidly establishing themselves as producers of#prestige period drama; the following year would see the beginning of their legendary Sherlock Holmes series as well as The Jewel in the#Crown. scriptwriter Taylor was an obvious choice‚ having already proved himself with a number of high profile novel adaptations (and it#would be him winning all manner of plaudits for Jewel the next year). he does a good job with Wharton's ghost story‚ lifting a fair amount#of dialogue verbatim from the story. it's a relatively small scale mystery but its ghost‚ in the mute form of June Brown‚ makes a hell of#an impression. a rather sad and delicate narrative that neither demands a lot of interrogation nor offers much in the way of answers or#clear exposition; this is an impressionist sketch of the ghost story as a tale of muted loss and gentle waste below stairs
