Word: beacons
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THERE ARE AS many theories as to what's wrong with Beacon Hill as there are people who watch it. And people are watching it--in droves, all the while complaining about how terrible it is. The basic problem is that the show is boring and stupid. The reasons for that are many, and as sociologically complex as one wants to make them...
...area won't even be a neighborhood anymore. It will become a kind of shrine to a lifestyle for those who think that a world where "the Lowells talk only to Cabots, and the Cabots only to God" is a good one. I mean, whoever heard of the Beacon Hill Little League or the Louisburg Square Women's bowling night...
...seeing precisely how guests and hosts conducted a country-house weekend, for example, or how a solicitor maneuvered to blunt the family's democratic impulses and thus keep the class system intact for a few weeks more. That sort of dry, deft social management is nowhere present in Beacon Hill...
...downstairs crew at the Lassiters' seem very nearly a faceless lot. Mr. Hacker (George Rose) simply does not combine the piety and managerial skills of Mr. Hudson, and there are no equivalents of Rose or dear Mrs. Bridges. Finally, except for a few references to Prohibition, Beacon Hill betrays not the slightest concern with the world outside the Lassiters' door. There is little hope of the subtle interweave of historical issues and events with small domestic crises that has been the glory of Upstairs, Downstairs...
...might say that a successful drama of manners cannot be located in a highly mobile society. But that is probably overinterpreting the failure of Beacon Hill. More likely it is just a case of commercial television once again to trust the intelligence of its audience...