You
Can't Get the Staff
About the Show
Cameras venture
behind the doors of some of Britain's poshest homes to see how the
cream of society handle their domestic staff
Episode 1 - Princess
Olga, Baronet Sir Humphry and Lady Colin Campbell
New series exploring
how the cream of society handle domestic staff. In episode one,
Princess Olga Romanoff hires a 'garden boy' while renowned hostess
Lady Colin Campbell seeks a butler.
Show Clips &
Extras
Lady Linlithgow,
Detmar Blow and Carina Evans
Episode 2 - Lady
Linlithgow, Detmar Blow and Carina Evans
Lady Linlithgow
needs a new recruit to help run Bryngwyn Hall in Wales, while Carina
in Henley wants a home worker to do everything she does, apart from
sleep with her husband
Show Clips &
Extras
Caroline
Lowsley-Williams, Drew Rieger and John Mew
Episode 3 - Caroline
Lowsley-Williams, Drew Rieger and John Mew
Caroline plans
changes to the staff at the 2000-acre Chavenage House, and American
composer Drew Rieger has a housekeeping crisis in Baltimore with an
ex-royal butler coming to the rescue
Show Clips &
Extras
Sir Benjamin Slade,
Aurora Eastwood, The Rogers
Episode 4 - Sir
Benjamin Slade, Aurora Eastwood, The Rogers
Sir Benjamin Slade
of Maunsel House in Somerset is on the hunt for a handyman after the
last one ran off with his wife. And are Aurora Eastwood's standards
too high for a new groom?
Show Clips &
Extras
Sara Vestin Rahmani
and Anna Trent
Episode 5 - Sara
Vestin Rahmani and Anna Trent
Sara Vestin Rahmani
seeks a butler able to co-ordinate private jets and get along with
her two bulldogs. And the settling in period for Anna Trent's au pair
proves trickier than expected.
You
Can't Get The Staff, review: 'lightweight'
This
documentary about bumbling gentry and their long-suffering staff
lacked insight, says Gabriel Tate
By Gabriel
Tate10:00PM BST 21 Oct 2014
The opening episode
of the five-part documentary series You Can’t Get the Staff
resembled one long compilation of “comedy” moments from Downton.
In other words, the activities of an assortment of bumbling gentry
and long-suffering staff were put to a soundtrack of plucked strings,
with results that were mildly entertaining but hardly hilarious. Lady
Colin Campbell, for example, asserted that “14 [dinner guests]
always ensures a row” like a latterday Violet Crawley. “Eight,”
agreed Grant Harrold, her hired butler, was “a nice number”.
While royal
muckraker Campbell (author of Diana In Private and similar pap) was
only hiring help for the night, Princess Olga Romanoff (descendant of
Tsar Alexander III) and Sir Humphry Wakefield (owner of Chillingham
Castle in Northumberland) wanted permanent staff: the former to tend
to her 35 acres, the latter to polish his 2,000-plus items of armour
and weaponry. Following a series of job interviews awkwardly staged
for the camera, both hired suitable candidates with their rivals
ruling themselves out after minor quibbles over foxhunting and
swordsmanship.
The snarky
voiceover, with its ready indulgence of screamingly obvious puns and
wordplay, obscured what could have been a far more insightful
documentary. Why, for example, did they all live alone? What did
their staff really make of them? Barring the passing mention of a
broken marriage or the nouveau riche, this was gaily ignored in
favour of another cutaway to a reaction shot or brief tutorial on how
to polish a chandelier. The result was lightweight and incurious.
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