Jean Marsh's lasting work is the parlourmaid she wrote for herself. Rose Buck in Upstairs, Downstairs is capable, sharp and never sentimental, and the series built around her takes the servants as seriously as the family, which was the whole idea.
Fi1m perspective
Rose Buck, head parlourmaid, is good at her job and expects everyone else to be. Jean Marsh plays her sharp and plain, with a no-nonsense manner and no interest in being charming for the family upstairs, and the effect over fifty-four episodes is of a woman who is simply there, getting on with it, until you realise how much of the house rests on her. It is a part Marsh wrote for herself with Eileen Atkins. "And I was determined to be the maid and not the lady," she said, and she was.
She came to it the long way. Ballet, singing and acting training from childhood, repertory in Huddersfield and Nottingham, then two decades of screen work through the 1950s and 1960s on both sides of the Atlantic, including Doctor Who in 1965, where she was the companion Sara Kingdom, and The Twilight Zone. Upstairs, Downstairs ran on ITV from 1971 to 1975, with John Hawkesworth producing and developing it alongside the two writers. Marsh and Atkins made The House of Eliott for the BBC from 1991 to 1994, two sisters starting a fashion business in 1920s London, and Marsh went back to Rose for the BBC revival of 2010 to 2012.
The original run is the thing to see. It takes the servants' lives seriously and lets them change over years, and Marsh's Rose sits at the centre of a downstairs company, with Gordon Jackson's Hudson and Angela Baddeley's Mrs Bridges, that is nearly always the stronger reason to return. It is not perfect. The staging can be stiff, and it is often said that the Bellamys upstairs ended up with more of the screen than the makers meant them to have, which is fair. Even so, we found ourselves caring whether Rose was all right in a way we rarely do about anyone in an ensemble this size, and the reason is that Marsh never once asks us to. She plays a woman with work to do and leaves the feeling to us.
Film gave her smaller and stranger things. Joanna Grey in The Eagle Has Landed (1976) is a Norfolk widow who has been sending Berlin the weather for years, a part that mostly exists to let the plot in, in a film we found good at both ends and slow in the middle. Hitchcock cast her in Frenzy (1972) as the secretary who finds a body. The fantasy films of the 1980s wanted her for villains, Mombi in Return to Oz (1985) and Queen Bavmorda in Willow (1988). The actor who set out to be the maid rather than the lady spent much of her film career being asked to be the witch. We have not reviewed those and leave them to the reader.
Start with 1971 rather than the revival, which never found the audience the original had. Fifty-four episodes is a commitment, and the staging will test you in places. Rose would tell you to get on with it.
Biography
Jean Marsh (1934–2025) was an English actress and writer. Born in Stoke Newington, London, she began her career in repertory theatre and made early film and television appearances in the 1950s.
She appeared as Alicia in the 1959 episode "The Lonely" of The Twilight Zone. Marsh co-created the series Upstairs, Downstairs (1971–1975) with Eileen Atkins and starred as Rose Buck, winning the 1975 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. She reprised the role in the 2010–2012 BBC revival. Other credits include Doctor Who (as Sara Kingdom and other roles), Frenzy (1972), The Changeling (1980), Return to Oz (1985), Willow (1988) and The Eagle Has Landed (1976). She was married to actor Jon Pertwee from 1955 to 1960.
