Customer Reviews

Manor House

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is definitely a great collection from purely a reality show entertainment point of view. However, what struck me even more than just my amusement was the lessons this show articulated about leadership and management. I've done quite a bit of reading about leadership, everything from "Think and Grow Rich" to "Primal Leadership", and one the overriding themes is always communication in all its various forms and in all the directions it flows. This series does a suburb job of illustrating exactly what can do wrong and how if different levels of an organization, or in this case, a manor, do not know, do not understand, or do not choose to care to understand what's going on in the hearts and minds of the people around them.

Sir John publicly insults the butler, and you get to see first hand how much more devastating that is than respectfully pulling someone to the side. The lady of the house's biggest complaint at the beginning of the show was about how she never saw her children. By the end she didn't seem to care, which shows us how quickly our minds can change if we don't maintain focus. Sir John kills a couple of birds for the lowest servants to cook for themselves as a treat. However, there's a big party coming up, and there's no way the servants are going to have time to fry the birds, so the apparent act of kindness is received by those whom it was directed at in completely the wrong way, which shows how important it is that we understand what the people around us need.

The best example for poor leadership in the house, however, probably occurs at the end. Sir John and the family are so distraught about leaving the house. They breakdown in front of the servants while saying good-bye, and they feel awful about leaving everyone whom they've come to feel so close to. At the same time, the servants are rather glad to be leaving aside from missing other people in their group, and most of them have developed a strong dislike for the family, of which the family is completely oblivious. The implication? Well, first, this shows how easily the same situation can look to two different groups of people on different sides of a situation. Secondly, if that was an organization, it would be on the brink of having its workforce walk out on it, even though, to the eyes of management, everything was splendid and, as they understood it, everyone was very connected to everyone else at all levels.

I've done my best to describe what I saw in this review, but I'm sure I've done it poorly as I am not well trained at critiquing this sort of thing. Also, there is plenty more going on that I didn't even come close to touching on. Please believe me on this point, though: if you are even at least a little bit interested in buying this title, do it! You will be so happy, and perhaps enlightened, that you did!

At the beginning of the show, Anna Oliff-Cooper describes her life as a busy doctor. She seems like the ultimate professional woman, juggling the demands of career and family.
The Oliff-Coopers (Anna, her sister, her sons, and her stuffy husband John) enter the Manor House playing the "aristocrats" and soon enough, this loving mother and doctor becomes lazy and vain. She never sees her children and doesnt care. She and her husband spend all day planning lavish balls, meeting Important People, and worrying about clothes and fashions. Meanwhile, the servants work 18 hour days, exhausted and resentful.
This is "reality tv" at its best, and like all good reality tv, the situations feel real enough to be uncomfortable. PBS's "Fronteir House" showed a disintegration of a family and a petty but vicious frontier feud. "Manor House" has even more memorable characters, including the pompous John Oliff-Cooper, who is soon spouting silly theories about social darwinism. Sir Edgar is the stern but softhearted butler, who at first sides with his masters, but ends up identifying intensely with the downstairs servants. There's an Indian tutor who is shunned by both the downstairs servants for his snobbery and the upstairs family for, well, his being a tutor. There's even a downstairs romance between the scullery maid and the hall boy. A sympathetic Edgar knows abot the romance (which would have been strictly forbidden) but looks the other way.
In the end, upstairs and downstairs look more even than one would imagine. The Oliff-Coopers are indolent, but not really happy -- their small son soon considers the downstairs servants more like family. Anna's sister is so unhappy she leaves the house. The downstairs servants fight but also bond tightly.
Overall, this was a wonderful series.

For three months, ordinary people played the parts of a Lord and Lady and the thirteen servants who worked for them in a large English country home. It was furnished circa 1906; the cast members dressed authentically, and there were no modern conveniences whatever.

Anna and John, the married couple who became the Lord and Lady of the house, had no trouble fitting into the roles of snobbish aristocrats who spent their days in selfish pleasures. They gave elegant dinners, a ball, and a charity fete, never realizing their staff were run ragged by their demands. Downstairs, the scullery maid washed dishes 16 hours a day, the footmen served the meals, and the butler supervised the servants. They worked seven days a week, only left the kitchen for morning prayers, and had no social or private lives.

Two scullery maids quit after only days, due to the unbearably hard work. Another scullery maid found romance (quite forbidden in Edwardian times) with the hall-boy, and the entire staff eventually learned to co-exist with the tempermental French chef. This is a great series, highly recommended for those who enjoy English history.

MANOR HOUSE is probably the best reality show I've ever seen. So well-cast, so loaded with real social meaning, and full of the kind of tension that recent REAL WORLD incarnations could only hope and pray for. (Even if I had no interest in history, my interest in gossip could keep me watching these people circling each other for hours.) It's also more provocative in many ways than game-based reality programming, because it FEELS like there is a game going on in MANOR HOUSE all the time. You leave the show with a creepy sense of how much "play" there is involved in any kind of social living. It's also fascinating to see how hard those who benefit from social imbalance work to justify what is, in essence, just good luck.

If you liked "Gosford Park," you will love this social experiement meets reality show. You'll experience the strict hierarchy of class and status of England in the early 1900s.

Narrated by the wonderful Derek Jacobi, he gives you a rich history of the whys and wherefores of the "upstairs/downstairs" way of life. The DVD also features some cheeky video diaries not included in the final broadcast (but don't watch them until you've seen the series first). I promise you'll get addicted to this show after watching the first hour!

I watched all six hours of this television program on PBS, and it changed my entire outlook on reality programming. The show places a group of peolple in a giant Edwardian Manor, and they have to act as if the last hundred years never happened. The main conflicts in this series arise from the social status between the master family (upstairs) and the servants (downstairs).

This series was not only educational, but very entertaining and different. Especially if you are even slightly interested in the British culture at that time. I would not recommend this, however, for people with really short attention spans.

If you ever get tired of The Bachelor or American Idol, or any other reality program, give this a try. It is worth every penny.

I was first introduced to the PBS House Series by our local library and ever since I've become a major fanatic of the House Series. We own Frontier House, our first time viewing the series & is second to Manor House in ranking. Then we own Colonial House, which isn't even worth wasting any time on, our least favorite. We also viewed and enjoyed the 1900 House series and we are going to end purchasing it I believe. Well anyhow, we are avid fans of the miniseries.

The reason why we like the Manor House series the best is due to it's integrity. I felt that this series did a very accurate job on portraying the era as well as display social conflict and dilemmas. I, like the first reviewer, enjoy leadership books ranging from Dale Carnegie to John Maxwell to the Ranger Manual and I must agree that the communcations are a subperb illustration of what can go wrong.

One of my favorite characters is Mr. Edgar and his determination to stick with the rules of the project, yet he made one major flaw I felt. Throughout the whole project the upstairs tenants, "The Oiliff-Coopers", were oblivious to the status of the downstairs staff. This can be mainly attributed to an admission by Mr Edgar that he relays only good reports to the Oiliff-Coopers. This creates alot of issues to the point where the staff is ready to walk off.

In situations like this the management must be aware of what is going on, in order to appropriately address it. Yet on the part of the servants, I struggle to empathize, because on so many ocassions they fail to realize just who they really are.

The servants in the show, volunteered to be there. That's it. No discussion. They bicker about having to do their job and all the while forgetting about just how much easier they have it compared to their 20th century counterparts. As Mr Edgar puts it "A house ran by the servants, for the servants." Which is where I feel that 2001 thinking certainly hinders their ability to fully absorb their roles.

One great illustration of this are the servants constant talk about equality and better treatment. Kenny and First Footman Rob are caught sleeping out by the lake at midday! When Mr. Edgar discovers them, he expresses his anger in a professional manner about what they did wrong. In the scenes following the second footman Charlie feels that the two are being slighted and that "in the 21st century kindness is the oil" that makes a team move. When in reality it is teamwork and getting a job done. On another ocassion the servants claim that without their services the house falls apart. Yet in those times, and even today, companies can hire and fire at the flick of a wrist. In 1906 you are replacable, today you could go to a Union or the Employ Commission. All in all, just think of your everyday work crowd that just likes to bicker about everything. The servants are no different.

In conclusion, I still have to say this is the most enjoyable series and the characteres are fun to watch. I would recommend this series to anyone and I would choose this series to watch over and over again before choosing Colonial House.

I managed to miss much of this program during it's airings on PBS so when I saw it was due out on DVD I decided to get it. I like the concept of taking a modern day family and dropping them into an earlier time setting but this mini-series seemed to me like it lacks something. As in the earlier "1900 House" a target home was selected and restored to period function, here all details of that are left out. I would also have liked seeing/hearing more about the family/servant selection process, you get a little of that in watching the program. I found it interesting to watch but think an hour or so at a time is enough for me. Both "1900 House" and "Manor House" have companion books, you'll want it for this series especially to get a good backgrounding on what is going on.
I haven't gotten through it all yet but saw that the Oliff-Cooper family took to their roles a little too well to suit the servants. The servants brought out one of the most glaring problems in the cast selection process, the producers appear to have sometimes done a terrible job in selection. The first scullery maid candidate was an 18 yr. old who had no idea what she was getting into, she took off after just two days. I think the 2nd one did better but it took three tries to get one who could take the job, how could the selection process have been so badly managed? That lowest ranking manservant was a real prize too, seemed to resent the more privileged types way too much. All, or nearly all, of the others did quite well in what I've seen of the story. There's a two part diary included on Disc #1, I watched part one and thought it as interesting, if not more, than the program itself. Apparently they were filming around Sept. 11, 2001 because a couple of the cast made nice references to the tragedy.
The program is interesting to watch but you'll need to get the book, Amazon has it, as a companion guide- it's much better than the book for "1900 House".
The onscreen menu could use a little help I think, or a resonably large TV screen to watch the show on. I've tried it out on a small portable Sony DVD player, the show looks just fine but the menu requires a larger screen to read it well. I could read everything adequately but when changing menu selections the color shift on moving from one choice to another wasn't good enough to tell where you were, that's why you either need a bigger screen or PBS needed to make the menu larger or color changing.

OK, OK Dickins was a little earlier, but I found the series so compelling I really did want more. Six hours did not satisfy my thirst for more information and commentary. As a history freak, it would be a fantasy come true for me to do something like this, but since I haven't, this is the next best thing.

Of all the "House" series so far, this has proven my favorite, although I did enjoy 1940's House, 1900 House, and Frontier House as well. Colonial House is due to air in May 2004, and the BBC is filming Regency House (think: Jane Austen).

Along with such other projects as The 1900 House and Regency House Party, this experiment in living history and psychology also tests the extent to which the viewing public is capable of broadening its definition of what qualifies as entertainment here in the tens, the decade in which reality television is dominant.

In Manor House a number of men and women from all walks of life in our own time were set into an environment that recreated the Edwardian period of a century ago. What resulted was a three-month voyage away from the familiar into a life that was gritty for some, the height of luxury for others. Here scullery maids work pre-dawn to post-dusk scrubbing their hands raw, while footmen, cooks, maids, grooms and groundsmen toil with varying degrees of demanding labor. But at the heart of this hive of activity live the pampered gentry who (in the fiction created for the small screen) own the house and grounds, and from whom simultaneously much and very little is expected. Throughout the run-time of this series, various guests pay calls in order to push the storyline forward, including a real-life Indian prince.

I thought this was a great series start to finish, and would even say at times it was engrossing with its cast drawn from the spectrum of modern British society. So real was this outing into the past made to seem that at one point Mrs. Oliff-Cooper, in actuality, of course, a twenty-first-century denizen, remarked that she had to keep reminding herself that her son was not one day going to inherit the house, grounds, servants, and all there. Yes, so real did it seem that I also found myself thinking of how sad that these likable people would shortly be confronted with the tragedy of the First World War.

I'm always glad when new titles such as these are made, and think if anything, Manor House on DVD was under-priced.