Word: beacon
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...Beacon Hill, like its English counterpart, Upstairs, Downstairs, is a study of relationships between social classes. The English version takes place in a land ruled by a centuries-old tradition of aristocracy, and the Bellamys are only a little less convinced that they belong where they are than their butler is. The originators of Beacon Hill understood that knowing one's place and sticking to it was a particularly British obsession, and at least did not try to create what would most likely be only a pale American imitation of the British show. But all the problems most commonly associated...
America is a land of upward mobility--we've all heard that since grade school. Every boy can grow up to be president, and Benjamin Lassiter rose from poor immigrant to power mogul in Boston. But if Lassiter were really as nice and paternal as Beacon Hill's scriptwriters would have us believe--the gently father saving his daughter's name or genially sponsoring a young boy as ambitious as he himself once was--it's hard to see how he could have made as much money as he is supposed to have. Nice people don't get rich...
...family, for that matter, threatened by the newness of their wealth or the insecurity of their social position. They are all amazingly, boringly secure in a world in which they have no historical place. No Irish, as has often been pointed out during the past few weeks, lived on Beacon Hill in the 1920's. Any Irishman who would dare to move there, even in a piece of fiction, must have some distinct goal in mind, some all-encompassing ambition that would overcome the unspoken but still strict social rules of the time, and of our time...
...having to be biting and aggressive would be an admission by one of America's largest corporations that this is indeed a closed society with a rigid class structure. It is much more politic for CBS to push forward the benign version of the American dream now found in Beacon Hill. It makes for a pretty show, an optimistic show, one that shows off little but the talents of the costume designer...
...result is a situation comedy only a little more exciting than the Doris Day Show. In fact, the last two episodes have ended with I Love Lucy's favorite device of a wife benignly but purposefully misleading her husband. Even the soap operas to which Beacon Hill has been compared face up to hate and abortion and murder and all the other joys of everyday life...