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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 347579" data-attributes="member: 23">Goodwill To All Men / What The Footman Saw / A Perfect Stranger / Distant Thunder / The Sudden Storm continued Rose’s character seems to have changed greatly this year. She’s far more assertive - stridently so at times. More than once she does the unthinkable and raises her voice at Hudson (“You’re not my bleedin’ father” she shouts at him at one point), and she's even rather cold about Lady Marjorie's memory when it's invoked by Hudson (I found this fascinating given the almost universal reverence Marjorie commanded in life and death up to this point). There have been steps in this direction for some time, of course. Certainly her time in Greenwich with Elizabeth, Lawrence and Thomas saw her outlook change. All the same, it still feels rather shocking and almost out of character. Bizarrely, her almost accepting marriage to David from Duty Free (Keith Barron doing a very plausible Antipodean accent as the son of a Yorkshire sheep farmer who has emigrated to Australia. Even more pleasingly, he refers to his “station” which, thanks to The Man From Snowy River, I know to be correct) feels rather more in character, given her romantic side, even if her final choice to turn him down because she panics at the through of leaving service feels inevitable.Wedding bells are in the air, too, for Mrs Bridges who is taken with a fishmonger. It’s never going to work. Apart from him being uncouth and full of himself, there’s that annoying lip-smacking habit in between every other sentence (well… it certainly put me off him, anyway). Of course, he turns out to be a man who can’t hold his drink and who very publicly blasts poor, smitten Mrs B. with his nasty tongue, spelling the end. But not before some good things come out of it: there’s the servants’ trip to Herne Bay - a sequence which must have cost a bomb in getting all the costuming and seaside dressings correct. And not just the cast, mind you - there are huge crowd scenes on the beach, the pier and at the park with everyone period-correct. Very impressive.The best thing to come from this episode is a direct reference to something that’s been unspoken since Series One. When things begin to get serious between Mrs Bridges and Albert Lyons the lip smacking fishmonger, Mrs Bridges has a chat with Hudson where she addresses the marriage pact revealed back in Why Is Her Door Locked? She even makes a passing reference to her “troubles” of the time. It’s a wonderful, warm scene for them slipping into using one another’s first names as the conversation becomes more real over their nightcaps. Hudson’s response, that he’ll miss her greatly but nothing must stand in the way of her happiness is very touching indeed, with just an underlying hint of the sacrifice he’s making in that moment and the depth of feeling behind it.Hazel has emerged as a very sympathetic character in the latter part of Series Two. The strained marriage between she and James has been the backdrop to other ongoing dramas and it’s been surprisingly effective this way. Rather than telling us, her inner sadness has been held entirely behind her eyes. Even Hazel’s miscarriage felt rather like a B-story due to it taking place in a period of time between episodes and us learning about it piecemeal through dialogue.James’s return to cadville has taken a borderline incestuous turn with him clearly having designs on Georgina. And what better way for him to initiate a potential affair than putting her over his knee and smacking her bottom? I like that I’m not clear on whether Georgina is so naïve she doesn’t realise she’s being seduced or she’s too frightened to say no to his various demands or she’s actually enjoying it all. I suspect the truth is somewhere in between all three.This incestuousness has in turn got Richard looking at daughter-in-law Hazel with some kind of “oh, but I must fight this” longing and her not appearing altogether horrified by the idea. I do wonder where this is all going to go.As with the death of King Edward VII in the final episode of Series Two, Britain’s entry into The Great War in the final episode of Series Three feels like a game changer. I really like that instead of an overt cliffhanger, there’s a simple need created for the viewer to come back and see how such a dramatic change to the world around them will affect the characters, and it’s all based on our knowledge of history. It’s certainly been effective with me, since I need to see what turns Series Four will take.</blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?