Just finished watching the Upstairs Downstairs reboot from 2010-12, which got mostly admiring reviews when it came out, some even comparing it favorably to the original series. I'd forgotten how weird and randomly plotted the second season is--the household at 165 Eaton Place gradually comes to include Sir Hallam Holland's mother's Sikh manservant (played by a heavily bearded Art Malik, so no problem there); the little daughter of a German Jewish refugee who collapses and dies shortly after getting triggered by the chauffeur's Union of British Fascists blackshirt getup (the daughter suffers from traumatic mutism for a couple of eps as well); Sir Hallam's long-lost sister, who has Down syndrome and has been tucked away in an asylum for most of her life; his mother's much younger half-sister (who was her father again?), a lesbian archeologist whose ex-lover writes a sexy novel that causes a terrible scandal; and Lady Holland sr's monkey, Solomon (looks to be a rhesus macaque), who outlives his mistress by a couple of episodes, for reasons that have nothing to do with the story as such (see below).
The Duke of Kent, a bisexual aesthete who really did exist, keeps us updated on the gathering storm in Europe, so no complaints there either. A Jewish-American millionaire (who made his fortune selling a product that sounds like Alka-Seltzer just in time for the repeal of Prohibition) conveniently opens a garment business in the East End so Lady Agnes (Keeley Hawes, always fabulous) can embarrass her husband, yet again, by posing for a sexy ad for nylons. Claire Foy, future ER II in The Crown, draws the short straw as Lady Persephone, Lady Agnes's younger sister, a Nazi sympathizer who prefers to live in Germany, like the RL Unity Mitford, and gets into all kinds of scrapes when she returns.
No surprise then that Dame Eileen Atkins, co-creator of the original series who played Lady Holland sr in S1 of the reboot, refused to have any part of S2. The cast is uniformly excellent, except possibly for Sir Hallam himself (Ed Stoppard, son of Tom), who's meant to be what the English call a bit of a stick and doesn't get much of a chance to stretch. (He spends most of the series fretting about Why England Slept and being mortified by the outré antics of his household.)
I'm not saying the show's not entertaining, just that the storyline's really herky-jerky and OTT. The writers seem to be straining to pander to current notions of diversity and inclusiveness, which, I'm guessing, may be the reason that Dame Eileen just wasn't into it. IIRC the show got clobbered in the ratings by a soapy competitor, Downton Abbey, and was canceled after the second season.
