Am I the only one watching this tale of an American department store pioneer in pre-World War I London? Jeremy Piven and Frances O’Connor star, and there is some wonderful eye candy for the gents in the characters of Ellen Love (Zoë Tapper) and Agnes Towler (Aisling Loftus)–and there are a couple of tall dark handsome dudes too, if that’s your preference. Recommended.
Isn’t Selfridge the one who blew all his money gallivanting around Europe with a couple of buxom Hungarian twins?
Very possibly. He was certainly a lover of the women, and quite the spendthrift if Piven’s portrayal is any indication.
I watched the first couple of episodes but for me Piven was so bad that I couldn’t go forward. And I generally like Piven.
In what particular ways was Piven’s performance bad? Maybe my standards aren’t as stringent, but I thought he did OK as a slightly manic overachiever.
His delivery somehow came off to me as both wooden yet over the top and took me out of any kind of suspension of disbelief. It was like watching the Master Thespian do Masterpiece Theater.
I tried to like this but there weren’t any characters I actually cared about, and I certainly didn’t care about the birth of a giant retail store.
You didn’t find the shop girl sympathetic? Is your heart made of stone, sir? j/k
Different strokes and all that, I suppose. I’m liking it about 75% as much as Downton Abbey.
The shows before and after this on PBS, Call the Midwife and The Bletchley Circle, are worth your time as well. In fact we’ve been enjoying Call the Midwife more than Downton Abbey.
Ooh, yes, the Bletchley Circle is neat. The premise is cool (four veterans of Bletchley Park’s team of codebreakers, adjusting with varying degrees of success to peacetime life in post-war England, team up to chase a serial killer), and the story is tight. A second season has been commissioned. What comes up next? Spies, maybe?
Mr. Selfridge, I’ll confess, didn’t seem all that interesting at first, but I’m warming to the idea. Jeremy Piven looks a hell of a lot like John Ritter in the few clips I’ve seen. I’ll be waiting for cameos from Joyce Dewitt as a crazed aristocrat and Suzanne Somers as the Dolly Sisters’ mom.
She the one that blackmailed the manager into giving her brother a job? She lost some sympathy there. I think the character I liked best in the two episodes I watched was the window dresser.
Call the Midwife we’ve been enjoying quite a bit. We missed the first episode of Bletchley unfortunately. Is there a way to catch up on that series? It looks interesting.
Well, I don’t think that that was blackmail at all, honestly, at least on her end. I don’t think that that was her intention in the least–she was just honestly asking for a job for her brother. Now the fact that the other guy (Mr. Grove) took it that way doesn’t make her culpable.
Funny you should mention the window dresser–he and Miss Towler (the shop girl) are becoming an item. (BTW I’m crushing hard on that actress, although she’s less than half my age)
The whole point of that scene was that she wasn’t blackmailing him at all. He was imagining all this subtext to what she was saying out of paranoia. She’s completely confused by his attempts to make the conversation a deal.
Exactly. You expressed it much better than I did, thank you.
The very idea of the adorable and innocent Agnes Towler stooping to blackmail! Why I never! ;-)
I am really enjoying this show, not sure if its the setting or just the overall quality of the actors. Season 1 and 2 are on Amazon Prime for free. :)
Season 3 I think started overseas and should be on PBS soon.
Season 3 was great! Papageno are you still watching? :p
I just finished watching season 3 over the Christmas holidays, and I believe Season 4 is showing across the pond right now. It should be on PBS here in the former colonies in late March / early April.
Also season 4 is the last season.
Actually I stopped watching part-way through the third season (maybe three episodes in). I just saw that things kept going from bad to worse for the main character, and knowing how he ended up in real life (irrelevant and penniless) it was just too depressing for me. Not to mention how the lovely Agnes Towler’s marriage was going with her new PTSD-afflicted husband.
Yeah the spiral was amazing to watch , seeing as how at the time no one apparently cared to tell him? #SelfridgehadNOfriends
I am excited to see season 4, as Lady Mae Loxley is returning, so much yum. :p
His downward spiral is putting a pretty negative spin on what used to be a pretty enjoyable series.
She’s OK. :-) The one who really was that in my book was the showgirl Selfridge was carrying on with in Season 1, as well as, it goes without saying, Agnes Towler as played by Aisling Loftus. Can’t get enough of her in that Gibson Girl hairdo and those pre WW1 outfits. :swoon: