I must say, my teeth were grinding even before I started to watch... reading that the Milford girls were 'independent minded rule breakers who threw off convention'. They weren't. They came from a background so privileged and entitled that the 'rules' others lived by were not even recognized by them. They didn't break rules knowingly, they were unaware of them.
The pre show blurb went on to speak of their lack of education, when in fact they were educated at home like so many women in history. A university education was never the only form of education. Their letters alone will tell any reader as much about what they did know as what they didn't.
The first episode, seemed to be the cliched cartoonish version of the English upper classes between the wars which holds sway with the chattering classes now.
But it did improve, its talented cast brought out some of the layers in their bilateral relationships, and the increasing clouds on the political horizons began to make their presence felt amidst the unfathomable stupidity of at least three of these under-employed but seemingly intelligent women.
What remains unpalatable (the commitment to fascism before, during and after the war of at least two of these daughters, and the similarly odd communist sympathies of another) is almost impossible to understand, other than to reflect on how divorced from the reality of most people they really were; by class, by design and by history.
Their characters are individually interesting when one reads their diaries, letters, work etc...but perhaps the story of these siblings cannot be told collectively without making it seem glib and crass, given its relationship to the sweep of history in the 20c.
