You too can be the Dowager Countess….for $12K a day (lunch included!)

Yes, I know, the ‘another network’ has something on called the Super Bowl up against tonights new installment of Downton Abbey. Hopefully, they’ll learn not to counter program when series three comes around in 2013. If you can’t make it to the big game, we have a once-in-a-lifetime travel deal to satisfy your inner-Dowager Countess.

For a mere $12,085 you, too, can have the opportunity to say “…What is a weekend?” or. perhaps, “…I couldn’t have electricity in the house, I wouldn’t sleep a wink. All those vapors floating about” at Highclere Castle.

The visit, which is good for up to four people, begins with coffee in the Countess of Carnarvon’s private morning room, followed by a tour of the State Rooms with the countess or her husband, the Earl of Carnarvon. Lunch is served in the State Dining Room, including fine wines personally selected by the Earl. After lunch it’s off to explore the estate via 4×4 vehicle.

The tours are offered by NoteWorthy Events, specialists in the creation of custom travel itineraries throughout the UK to the ‘upstairs’ members of the household and a 7-year winner of the Top Travel Specialist Award as given by Conde Nast Traveler magazine.

In case of bad weather, visitors can tour the castle’s Egyptology exhibition, housed in the cellar. Interestingly, it was the fifth Earl of Carnarvon who funded Howard Carter’s excursions to Egypt, where he discovered King Tut’s tomb in 1922. The high-dollar afternoon concludes with high tea with the countess.

If you’d like to pack your own lunch and just tour the castle, gardens and the exhibition as you would if you were a member of the ‘downstairs’,  you can put down about $73 for admission for a family of five. Hmmm….guess that makes lunch worth about $12,012.

All in all, I’d consider this a bargain. Some people pay this annually for Super Bowl tickets….and they still have to buy their own lunch.

Downton Abbey makes PBS an overnight success after 40+ years

PBS has now, officially, arrived. According to former Variety reporter Michael Schneider who is now with TV Guide, PBS is achieving their first TV Guide cover for a primetime program since the premiere of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series in 1980.

Finally, PBS has firmly planted the flag on the television landscape and taken back its rightful place on the February 6 cover with the series two finale of the series that is sweeping the nation, Downton Abbey. In what reads as if General Hospital’s Luke and Laura were on the cover and in true American commercial television fashion, the caption reads, “Will Wedding Bells Ring for Matthew & Mary?”

FYI, the finale of the second series will air on Sunday, February 19 at 8pm CT/9pm ET on PBS stations across the U.S. as part of PBS’ Masterpiece series. Can’t wait to see what PBS program is on the cover of TV Guide in the year 2044….

New PG Wodehouse stories to star Jennifer Saunders

The mere thought of this brings back many classic early 90’s memories of watching Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry in Jeeves and Wooster. Adapted from P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves stories, the series brilliantly told the story of a young gentleman with a minor aristocratic upbringing (Laurie) and his ‘personal gentleman’ (Fry), whose duty is to separate Wooster from a multitude of societal misadventures.

Danny Cohen, controller of BBC One, hopes this new adaptation of PG Wodehouse stories will bring his work to a whole new generation of viewers and create renewed interest in the original Jeeves series. Timothy Spall, Jennifer Saunders and Guy Andrews will star in Blandings, a six-part comedy series based on the stories of PG Wodehouse. This is great, pure and simple, to those that have loved Jeeves & Wooster for the last 20+ years, many of whom consider Wodehouse the greatest comic writer in history of the English language,

The series will be set 1929 and filmed on location in Northern Ireland. Jennifer Saunders will star as star as the unconquerable Connie, sister to the perpetually confused Lord Emsworth, to be played by Timothy Spall (Peter Pettigrew, Harry Potter, Winston Churchill, The King’s Speech).

Writer, Guy Andrews, described the series by saying: “Blandings Castle is dysfunction junction, the home of a chaotic family struggling to keep itself in order. Clarence Emsworth, ninth earl and master of Blandings Castle, yearns with all his soul to be left in peace; preferably in the company of his beloved pig, The Empress. But he never is. There is always someone who wants him to do something. Presiding over the blitzkrieg on his equilibrium is the baleful figure of his sister Connie, with whom he shares the house; at her shoulder is Clarence’s brainless younger son Freddie and a panoply of friends, enemies, servants, spongers, private detectives, bookies and confidence tricksters.

Andrews added, “For any writer, it is the rarest privilege imaginable to have Wodehouse legitimately available as source material. Instead of just stealing from him as we usually do.”

Can’t wait.If you haven’t seen Jeeves and Wooster, check it out. Well worth the time.

Are you MI-5 material?

Whether you’ve been watching the brilliant BBC series, MI-5 (Spooks) over the last decade,  sat through the recent Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy movie or read all the Robert Ludlum books and secretly identified with Jason Bourne, now is the time to see if you have what it takes to be a real-life intelligence officer. UK Security Services have developed a 15-minute online recruitment test where if you master the 15-minute online test, you might just find yourself invited by the Security Services to apply for a job as an MI5 intelligence officer.

The premise of the online test has a number of known foreign spies working in London who have been ordered home immediately under suspicious circumstances.

• MI5 is seeking to find out why and if there is any potential threat to Britain’s interests.
• Each player is given case files on two of the agents, information from an undercover agent and newspaper and police reports.
• At the end, there are four questions to answer – each worth a maximum of eight points.

If you find yourself doing well enough, and there’s a website link to the Security Service’s How To Apply section. On the Security Service side of the equation, officials have said they intend for the test to give a more realistic insight into life inside the real MI5 than Spooks ever did. For the real Security Service, it’s not all explosions, poisonings and a higher than the law allows per episode death count.

Want to see how you stack up? Take the test here at the official MI-5 website.

A senior Whitehall source said: “…Spooks is a great TV show, but the violence can put women off applying for jobs at MI5. A career in the Service is about brain not brawn, carefully piecing together vital intelligence to protect the UK and its people.

The Security Service website is careful to say that: ‘An incisive intellect and finely balanced judgment are essential, as are outstanding verbal and written communication skills. You must be able to demonstrate resilience and the ability to cope with setbacks, as well as the ability to work well in a team and quickly establish rapport with a wide range of people.”

What are you waiting for? You could be the next George Smiley. Me? I think I’ll stick to explosions, poisonings and high body counts.

Only Fools and Horses getting American face-lift….Sigh

What has widely been viewed as one of the most popular situation comedies of all-time in the UK will now become the next American re-make that will not last one season (IMHO). The ABC Television Network has announced that a pilot is in the works from the brains behind the U.S. comedy, Scrubs. For some time, the biggest cheerleader for the project was Steve Carell, who stars as Michael Scott in the American version of The Office. Carell has long said that playing David Jason’s character Del Boy, would be his “dream role“. “The British do sitcoms better than anybody else in the world. I think with the right scriptwriters and cast we could do Only Fools and Horses justice. If anybody wants to help me do a remake I’d love it,” Carell added. For some unknown reason (maybe I do know why) ABC waited to announce until the year after the brilliant creator of OFAH passed away. Can’t imagine he would have ever agreed to such a thing.

Here’s where I’m compelled to mention a few failed attempts over the years….

• Coupling – lasted only a few episodes even after using British scripts verbatum
• Chateau Snavely, Amanda, Payne – all failed American versions of Fawlty Towers
• Red Dwarf – unaired pilot
• The IT Crowd – unaired pilot
• The Rear Guard – failed Dad’s Army re-do
• Beane’s of Boston – Are You Being Served re-make that made it to pilot stage only, thankfully.

Let’s not even talk about Prime Suspect, the AbFab pilot attempt by Roseanne Barr or the discussion of a Vicar of Dibley re-do starring Kirstie Alley.

Thankfully, The Guardian has a keen eye and brilliant sense of humor over this as they offer some thoughts as to the subtle changes that will be made. I particularly like how The Nags Head will now have to be a Hooters in order to Americanize the series. Can’t wait to see what “lovely jubbly” will translate to in “American”.