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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 344374" data-attributes="member: 23">Series One I Dies From LoveWithout blinking we’ve gone from homosexuality to adultery to rape to suicide. UpDown is nothing if not consistently bold in its subject matter.Emily is a character I’ve barely mentioned in commenting on the episodes to date. In short, my first impression in the first episode or two was of the series’ weakest link. Evin Crowley’s performance felt a bit broad and the weakest of the ensemble, and the character herself - the good Catholic girl -felt stereotypical.As the episodes have gone by, Emily has grown on me. She’s felt almost peripheral as she hasn’t been very central, and that’s worked fine. It was still a little surprising to find that an episode with Emily in the spotlight was not only enjoyable but also touching and compelling.The episode captures two things particularly well: Firstly there’s Emily’s profound sense of loneliness paired with naïveté that makes her clinginess - and the tragic episode ending - understandable to the viewer. Secondly, this episode exceeds the previous episode in showing the amount of control the wealthy homeowners can exert over every area of their servants’ lives - and this includes their personal lives. It feels particularly cruel that this degree of intrusion takes away Emily’s one glimmer of hope.It also goes on to show that the servants are treated like second class citizens with no rights even in death, with poor Emily’s body being handled like an ugly piece of furniture one doesn’t want the neighbours to see leaving the house by daylight, and the undertakers feeling more like removal men, commenting knowingly how her body won’t be permitted to be buried on consecrated ground.There’s an irony to the devout Irish Catholic character’s suicide, of course, but this also reinforces just how lonely, hurt and desperate she felt. I thought the way it was executed felt very much like classic Corrie (juxtaposing the celebratory staff singing on the departing omnibus with the discovery of Emily’s body and the news being told had echoes Minnie Caldwell’s death).I really liked the absence of dialogue in certain scenes following Emily’s death. Most notably, there’s a scene where we see Rose tell Hudson, but they’re just outside the servants’ entrance while we stay inside the house, watching them in middle distance through a window. The subtle performances conveyed the emotion of the moment which felt more powerful than any words, as well as introducing the slightly unsettling feeling that we were looking in on an incredibly intimate scene. It’s one of my favourite spots of the episode.At this point, Hudson is arguably the character with whom we’ve spent least time - or at least the character we know the least about. Gordon Jackson, however, can do wonders with very little. Once again, the emphatic way Hudson flatly tells the irreverent undertakers “God will forgive her” [Emily] leaves no room at all for doubt. If I wanted to be convinced of something beyond any doubt, I'd ask Gordon Jackson to tell me.As far as her pretty young footman, I found it difficult to read whether he was, indeed, happy to drop Emily or was bowing purely to pressure from his employer. I suspect the truth is somewhere in the middle, but I like the obliqueness.As nasty Mrs Van Groeben, I had thought that Yolande Turner didn’t sound very South African, but it turns out the actress was born there, so that’s me told. She’s got something of the Lindsay Wagner to her appearance, I think.The episode’s big scene-stealer for me was Aimée Delamain as Lady Templeton: a winning combination of waspish, blunt and regal. This appears to be her one and only episode of UpDown, sadly. After this episode I had hopes she might become a recurring headache for Marjorie.Emily’s death felt all the more pointless since, having spent so much time with her this episode, I discovered I really quite like her. But I love that this series is not afraid to shake things up with cast changes and permanent consequences for each story. It really feels as though anything can happen.</blockquote>

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