Jace Lacob Before we get going here — if you’re just joining us and have not yet listened to the first episode of Making MASTERPIECE, take a moment to do that. This will make a lot more sense if you do. You can find “Episode One: The Beginning” at pbs.org/makingmasterpiece, in the MASTERPIECE Studio podcast feed, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

In the early 90s, screenwriter Andrew Davies had a vision for an exciting new television series. It was something he’d been thinking about for a while.

Andrew Davies  I guess I’d always had my adaptation partly in my head…

Jace Davies was already a Masterpiece Theatre regular — he’d written To Serve Them All My Days, Mother Love, House of Cards… But at the time, Davies wasn’t thinking about contemporary British politics. He was thinking about the 19th century novel Middlemarch.

Andrew Davies You know, a lot of people regard Middlemarch ‘the greatest of all English novels.’ Well, that doesn’t mean the best adaptation would copy out every word of it.

Jace Davies’ version of Middlemarch wasn’t stuffy — it felt sexy, and addictive. Plus, it had a real smokeshow of a male lead: Rufus Sewell.

Andrew Davies His looks were ideal for a romantic lead.

Rufus Sewell Part of my disguise for life was this enormous mop of hair, which was kind of like a Sewell thing. And I think that just kind of looked right.

Jace Middlemarch’s Will Ladislaw was one of the first acting jobs Sewell landed after graduating from drama school.

Rufus Sewell So I left drama school in 1989. So I’d been..I had tasted unemployment for some time. It was quite a big week for me.

Jace Sewell might’ve been new to the world of film acting, but his performance in Middlemarch was very memorable. He made audiences swoon across the world: both in the U.K. AND in the States when the series aired on Masterpiece Theatre.

Rufus Sewell I wasn’t quite sure what I was getting into.

Jace That was back in 1994. Middlemarch ended up being an international sensation. Which at the time…was surprising.

Rebecca Eaton And at that point, people were afraid of British accents, afraid of costume dramas.

Jace And Middlemarch was a quintessential British costume drama (accents and all).

Rufus Sewell I remember when Andrew Davies wrote this, it was a period when that kind of Sunday afternoon period drama thing had been out of vogue for a very long time, because I remember telling people that it reminded me of the stuff that we used to watch when I was young. So I think it was a period when that it all kind of gone away.

Jace This was a very scary time for Masterpiece Theatre. The series had made a name for itself as the go-to-place to watch this kind of British television, so as fewer costume dramas were being made, fewer people were watching Masterpiece Theatre.

It seemed like its time… was coming… to an end.

Susanne Simpson It was in trouble

Bob Knapp It was kind of dire.

Rebecca Eaton There was competition.

Henry Becton We would go through periods when there wasn’t really a lot of great material.

Jace What could the producers do to keep the show going?

Rebecca Eaton I remember thinking — maybe somebody else said this — ‘Maybe you should rename the show Minorpiece Theater, not Masterpiece Theater. These are not big titles.’

Jace I’m Jace Lacob and this is Making MASTERPIECE, a special miniseries from MASTERPIECE Studio. We’re covering five decades of MASTERPIECE history in three episodes — where Masterpiece Theatre came from, how it changed television, and what it still has in store for its 50th season.

EPISODE 2: Minorpiece Theatre.

So, I just gave you a taste of the dark days that are to come in Masterpiece Theatre’s history. But first, let’s go back to a time when Masterpiece Theatre was at the top of its game. That way, I can show you exactly how far the great can fall…

After it debuted on PBS on January 10, 1971, Masterpiece Theatre grew into the de facto home of the best British drama on American television. It aired hit after hit — series like Elizabeth R…

Robin Ellis It was a fantastic experience.

Jace …Upstairs, Downstairs…

Elizabeth McGovern There’s something about that picture that made me want to be an actress.

Jace …Poldark, and I, Claudius… 

Nancy West Even PBS can do sex. And it’ll be just fine.

Jace And then, in 1984, Masterpiece Theatre gave audiences something new to love: The Jewel in the Crown.

Charles Dance I guess it was the Game of Thrones of its day, really, it was huge.

Jace Charles Dance would know. He was in Game of Thrones – as Tywin Lannister – AND in The Jewel in the Crown as Guy Perron.

Charles Dance  Initially, I was sent the script with a view to auditioning for a totally other part. And the more I read this totally other part, the more I kept being drawn to Guy Perron. So I persuaded my agent at the time to say to Granada Television, ‘Well, Mr. Dance is very happy and pleased that you have asked him to audition for this character, but can he please audition for this other character?’ And I did. And thankfully, they asked me to do it.

Jace The Jewel in the Crown had a budget of around $7 million, which, in the ‘80s, was A LOT for a TV show. That translated to some high production values…

Charles Dance And we were lucky enough on that shoot to go all over India. And we were there for four months, which is a considerable time, really. And the fact that we were there working as well as being tourists, well, it was a bonus. You know, I mean, we were there working on what we all hoped but didn’t know was going to be a rather wonderful piece of television.

Jace Of course, Jewel DID turn out to be a really wonderful piece of television. It WAS beautifully made… but it was also challenging because it examined the atrocities of British Imperialism.

It was prestige TV and, when it aired, it just seemed like everyone was watching — even future executive producer Rebecca Eaton.

Rebecca Eaton I binged it. This is back in, what year would it have been, early 80s? Yeah, I was bingeing it. I didn’t know that’s what I was doing, but that’s what I was doing.

Jace A year later, when Eaton was asked to become Masterpiece Theatre’s third-ever executive producer, The Jewel in the Crown was fresh in her mind, and one of the reasons she said “Yes” to the job.

Rebecca Eaton I’ve always thought that people watch MASTERPIECE for the drama, for the writing, for the direction, but also to be transported. And that’s what that’s that’s what Jewel in the Crown did for me.

Jace By the time Rebecca Eaton became the executive producer, Masterpiece Theatre was in prime position. Nowhere else on American television could audiences catch classic literary adaptations, cozy English murder mysteries, and sharp modern dramas, all in one place.

People loved Masterpiece Theatre… People like Charles Dance…

Charles Dance When I was in America, I could watch PBS and not have to sit through interminable advertising commercials.

Jace And actor Rufus Sewell.

Rufus Sewell It was one of the things, along with NPR, that made me think that I wouldn’t mind hanging out in America, because I did all of those shows that I’d grown up with were actually bundled together and presented on the same program. It’s like one of the best shows you could ever have. We don’t have that in England. We have all of those things, but not all the same company.

Jace Masterpiece Theatre was a curator, of sorts. It selected the best British television and aired it in the States. And the series it cherry picked for broadcast were largely up to Eaton and her small Boston-based team of producers.

Rebecca Eaton We’re basically renting the programs for the ability to air them on PBS in the States for a number of years.

Jace It was a unique operation, and it meant that Masterpiece Theatre and its sister series Mystery! could bring high quality programs to public television without breaking the bank.

And Eaton loved being a part of it. She loved selecting which programs to air… and she loved working with the series’ famous hosts,

CLIP

Vincent Price Good evening, I’m Vincent Price.

Jace including the horror-movie-icon AND Mystery! host Vincent Price.

Rebecca Eaton My mother was an actress and had performed with Vincent, knew him and had done a little bit of work with him…

Jace Eaton’s mother, Katherine Emery, and Vincent Price had actually been good friends.

Rebecca Eaton I don’t remember him from my childhood, although apparently my brother and his son had a joint birthday party. So when my time came to be executive producer and Vincent’s boss, my mother had died. And the day came when I was going to meet Vincent, and I was nervous about meeting him. You know, he was Vincent Price and I was a newbie. And I thought, I wonder if he’ll remember her. And he was in a room that I walked in the door. He turned around. He put his arms out and said, “Oh, you look just like her.” And gave me a huge hug, which says a lot about Vincent. He was full of grace.

Jace Part of Eaton’s job was to help the hosts with their monologues, which bookended all of the programs Masterpiece Theatre – and Mystery! – aired… a nerve-wracking task when you’re collaborating with people as famous as Price.

And then, when Price stepped down as Mystery! host, the peerless Dame Diana Rigg became his replacement.

CLIP

Diana Rigg A policeman’s lot may not be a happy one, but a police woman’s is even worse, as we’ll see tonight in Prime Suspect, a three-part thriller made especially for television…

Jace Diana Rigg – who died late last year– is probably best known as Olenna Tyrell from Game of Thrones. But she was already a famous actor when she started introducing Mystery! programs in 1989. Rigg had married James Bond — in a movie, of course — and played stylish spy Emma Peel in the popular series, The Avengers.

Rebecca Eaton She’d been in The Avengers, but she’d also been in a movie with Vincent Price called Theater of Blood, some horrible horror movie. Not horrible. Probably a wonderful horror movie. So we called up Diana, and she said absolutely right away.

Jace And she brought her in jewels. Is that correct?

Rebecca Eaton And she brought her own jewels. Her husband, Archie Stirling, had a castle. And so we were getting costume jewelry and kind of putting them on. And she said, ‘No, no, no.’ And she would whip out these fabulous diamonds and pearls and put them on, and look great.

CLIP

Diana Rigg …Jane Tennison knows there’s one rule a policewoman must obey above all others: never let them see you cry. Part 1 of Prime Suspect.”

Jace Rigg introduced and wrapped up every episode of every show Mystery! aired until 2003. It was like a fun little bonus for the audience who got to see what she would say every week… BUT… outside of Mystery! – and MASTERPIECE – hosts just weren’t something people were used to seeing…

Laura Linney Like, ‘What’s going on? Why is there a person introducing a TV show to me?’

Jace This is the actor Laura Linney.

You might know her as Wendy Byrde from Netflix’s Ozark, or Sarah in Love, Actually…or, better yet… you might even recognize her voice from MASTERPIECE.

CLIP

Laura Linney Downton Abbey. Beginning tonight on MASTERPIECE Classic.

Jace That’s because Linney hosts MASTERPIECE to this day.

Linney gets why some people might think that having a host is weird. But at this point, it’s tradition! MASTERPIECE has always had a host, ever since the first day it aired in 1971.

And Linney remembers watching the series back then…

Laura Linney And I was young. I mean, I was very young, but it was a highlight to the week, was watching it. And Alistair Cooke was a big influence also.

Jace Alistair Cooke, the legendary British-American journalist, was Masterpiece Theatre’s first-ever host. And he helped make “host” a sought-after role… something that Vincent Price, Diana Rigg, AND Laura Linney would actually want to do.

Laura Linney You know, if someone had told me as I was a little kid, you know, on the floor watching him introduce those shows and like yearning to see him, like, I couldn’t wait to watch Alistair Cooke, you know, in that chair. And if someone had told me that I would be following in his footsteps, you know, generations later, I would never have believed it.

Jace Like Linney, culture critic and television expert Soraya Nadia McDonald – of The Undefeated and episode one of this podcast – grew up watching Alistair Cooke on Masterpiece Theatre. And as she explains, having a host just… makes sense.

Soraya Nadia McDonald Because it introduces the thing that you’re going to watch, it kind of makes it feel sort of like a special event.

Jace Cooke gave people another reason to tune into Masterpiece Theatre, and he also helped tee-up the shows– he could talk about the books they were based on, or provide some historical context…

He also helped set the tone of the series.

Soraya Nadia McDonald  I think Alistair Cooke, like more than anything, brings this gravitas.  I’m not even sure if it’s true. But like, I just have this vision of him in an ascot. Like, I think he was probably actually, like usually in a tie. But it’s almost like there is something about the authority in his voice that just makes you think it’s an ascot.

Jace Or as Downton Abbey’s Elizabeth McGovern puts it–

Elizabeth McGovern I suppose it could be summed up in the word class. He just had it.

CLIP

Alistair Cooke We open tonight a new television theatre, which in the next year will show you plays adapted from the works of Balzac,  Henry James, Dostoevsky…

Jace As Masterpiece Theatre’s host, Cooke’s face appeared in living rooms across the United States every Sunday. So when Masterpiece Theatre’s star rose…so did Cooke’s.

Soraya Nadia McDonald As I was sort of looking through pictures of Alastair, that, yeah, in fact, like when he hosts, he’s wearing a necktie. The ascot actually comes from Alistair Cookie, which is like Cookie Monster’s take on Alistair Cooke.

CLIP

Cookie Monster Good evening and welcome to Monsterpiece Theatre. Me Alistair Cookie.

Jace Alistair Cookie. Cooke was even parodied on Sesame Street by the equally legendary Cookie Monster. If that’s not the big time, then nothing is.

CLIP

Cookie Monster This Alistair Cookie. Good evening!

Jace Hosting Masterpiece Theatre made Alistair Cooke a household name… and a household face. People recognized him wherever he went.

Susan Cooke Kittredge People used to come up to him all the time everywhere and say, ‘Are you who I think you are?’ And he got tired of saying, ‘Well, yes, I’m Alistair Cooke.’ So he didn’t, he’d say, ‘Yes, I’m Bob Hope.’ 

Jace This is Susan Cooke Kittredge, Cooke’s daughter.

Susan Cooke Kittredge So he was in San Francisco staying at the Huntington Hotel, one afternoon, descending the front stairs, and an elderly woman was walking up the stairs and looked up at him and said, ‘Are you who I think you are?’ To which he replied, of course, ‘Yes, I’m Bob Hope,’ and she replied, ‘Well, isn’t that interesting? I’m Mrs. Bob Hope.’ He just loved telling that story. He loved telling it because the joke was on him and it just he adored it. So I think he did quite well with the fame. He carried it well.

Jace Cooke was a character. Yes, people would tune into Masterpiece Theatre to watch the great shows, but they would also tune in just for him. He could make just about anything sound interesting.

Rebecca Eaton He knew how to write and then how to say what he wanted to say as if he were speaking to just you.

Jace So… when Cooke sent a letter to Eaton and WGBH president Henry Becton, stating that he would be retiring from the series, they were devastated.

Rebecca Eaton I think there were some tears.

Henry Becton My reaction was to be dismayed, because I thought he could keep going for another five years, easily. He was so good at it. And he was so much part of the personality of the series and had become part of the family. So it was very sad for me. I’m sure even sadder for Rebecca.

Jace After 21 years as the host of Masterpiece Theatre, Cooke was stepping away from the camera.

CLIP

Alistair Cooke  I was hired for two years, and they turned into 21, but also 40 years ago exactly this month, I first became a regular television performer, as one of my old directors called, ‘our writer / narrator / host.’ Forty years is enough…

Jace The day Cooke filmed his last monologue, Eaton sat in the booth alongside his family.

Susan Cooke Kittredge One of the images I have of that day, so much is sitting in the booth and watching the recording. And he did not know we were there.

Rebecca Eaton I thought it would be really the right thing to have his family there because it was historic.

CLIP

Alistair Cooke And so, I just want to say to all those men and women and tots who down the decades have told us what they liked and why, a very grateful thank you. So goodnight and goodbye.

Rebecca Eaton And then it was done and nobody said anything. We sat very still…

…And then we all went outside and went into the studio and he saw his family and he was furious at me for this.

Susan Cooke Kittredge I think he had thought he could just quietly slip out the back door. And clearly, that wasn’t going to happen.

Jace They threw Cooke a big party and Eaton gave him 21 bottles of his favorite scotch, one for each year he had been the host. But it was still a bittersweet day.

By the end of his tenure as Masterpiece Theatre’s host, Cooke and Masterpiece Theatre were kind of synonymous. It was hard to imagine one without the other. And now…Cooke was done.

Rebecca Eaton I remember thinking, ‘OK, Rebecca, this is when you really have to step up and do your job rather than just kind of ride on his coattails.’

Jace And in 1992, Eaton had no idea just how difficult her job was about to become.

The first thing she had to do, though, seemed easy enough: find a new host.

Rebecca Eaton Everybody applied for the job. You wouldn’t believe the number of tapes we would get, and letters. My favorite was some some boyfriend of mine from about the third grade showed up saying, ‘Remember me? Here I am and I’m the one for you.’

Jace Eaton’s third grade boyfriend was not going to be the new host, however.

Rebecca Eaton We then asked Michael Palin, Monty Python’s Michael Palin. I had heard that he loved fruitcake. So I armed myself with two or three fruitcakes and went to meet him for a drink and did my best to charm him into agreeing to do it and gave him the fruitcake. And he loved the fruitcake. But he said no. He said no.

Jace So then she asked the witty New York Times columnist, Russell Baker.

Rebecca Eaton And Russell Baker said, ‘Absolutely not. Only a fool or a suicidal maniac would follow Alistair Cooke. I want to be the guy who follows the guy who follows Alistair Cooke.’ So, oh, dear. But we persisted.

Jace And in 1993 Russell Baker took up the mantle of Masterpiece Theatre host.

CLIP

Russell Baker It was deep winter when I first looked at the program you’re about to see.

Jace This is not Baker’s first intro…this is actually from the 1998 Season.

CLIP

Russell Baker Four hours later, that’s how long the show runs, I was cured. I still had the cold but I no longer wanted to die. I’d been to a wonderful place, one of those places they don’t make anymore and never will again, I suppose. And I met a fascinating bunch of people.

Jace Soraya Nadia McDonald, of The Undefeated, again:

Soraya Nadia McDonald It just felt natural for him to kind of take over, particularly because like, he was an author whose writing appeared in my middle school textbooks. And my mother really liked him. And like, well, if mom approves, then he must have some brains because I you know, I thought of my mother as much as I love her and adore her, is like an incredible snob. Then like if Russell Baker can pass Lillian’s muster, then he must be alright.

Jace Masterpiece Theatre’s audience kept turning in with Russell Baker as the host. He brought a similar kind of intelligence and charm to the role that Cooke had. AND he was American, which gave his intros a more familiar feeling to his Stateside audience.

But there were other, bigger problems threatening the series.

Problem number one? Tastes were changing and costume dramas… were going out of style.

Soraya Nadia McDOnald You had these sitcoms that were sort of like had huge, huge audiences, whether it was Seinfeld or Friends. So it really felt like in terms of, what is popular at that time It’s really swinging quite far away from this sort of quintessential work, that MASTERPIECE like did and was known for which was these like hours long costume dramas. It’s really like, you know, they’re just about as far afield from each other as you could get.

Jace Audiences loved these contemporary sitcoms. They tuned in by the millions. And so the producers who were actually making television started going more in that direction.

Rebecca Eaton The British started to make fewer and fewer frock dramas, costume dramas, the things that we knew our audience loved. So then there would be several years of no Jane Austen or no frocks at all.

Jace Because British television production was turning away from “frock dramas,” Masterpiece Theatre turned to the shows they were making like House of Cards and Traffik.

Nancy West They were urban, gritty, hard-edged, and what they did was show Americans that the drama Masterpiece Theater was offering could be very, very contemporary.

Jace Nancy West is another of our go-to Masterpiece Theatre experts.

And don’t get me wrong: House of Cards and Traffik were still provocative, groundbreaking shows… That wasn’t the issue…

Nancy West And viewers loved these shows. But they also wondered, ‘Wait a minute, we thought Masterpiece Theater did frock dramas, what’s going on here?’ And so it led to a bit of an identity crisis for MASTERPIECE.

Jace And that trend – of showing more hard-hitting stuff – could also be seen on Mystery!

Rebecca Eaton I didn’t get nervous about deciding what to choose. Until Prime Suspect came along.

Jace Mystery! was the home of cozy, tea kettle murders. And Prime Suspect was… not that.

Rebecca Eaton It’s contemporary, it’s homicide. It’s not just charming country house murder. You know, this is gritty.

Henry Becton And she showed me a few episodes and said, ‘I think I’m going to have to turn this down, don’t you think?’ And I said, ‘Rebecca, this is so good. People aren’t going to worry about whether it’s contemporary and gritty after they’ve seen a few episodes.

Rebecca Eaton So we invested in it. We put it out and then sort of held our breath to see if the Mystery! audience would buy it. And not only did they buy it, they ate it up.

Jace Prime Suspect, of course, remains one of the most celebrated television crime series of all time. Dame Helen Mirren’s no-nonsense DI Jane Tennison, created by Lynda LaPlante, is a character like none other.

CLIP

Michael: Don’t expect me to make any decisions now. This is not the right time.

Tennison: Well when is the right time? Look, I am the only officer of my rank who is continually overstepped, sidestepped, whatever. Just give me the chance to prove that I can do it.

Michael: You don’t have to prove yourself to me. Let me think about it.

Tennison: Well that’s not enough, Michael.

Jace Prime Suspect was a success.

Nancy West It had a distinct feminist sensibility that I don’t think was around before. It tapped into the culture of the 1990s. And so we saw Tennison trying to do a job and do it well and get promoted and get recognition. But she’s up against a glass ceiling all the time. And yet she’s the smartest person in the room. So I think for a lot of viewers, they just went, ‘Wow, wow.’

Jace But meanwhile… Eaton still wanted to get Masterpiece Theatre back to its roots. She was hankering for those literary-minded, costume dramas — there weren’t very many out there — and those that were being made were getting snapped up by commercial cable networks.

Which brings us to problem number two: competition.

Rebecca Eaton We’d never really had that before because we sort of invented the wheel. There was competition coming in from A&E, the BBC was starting a channel. Time-Life was interested in this stuff. So we had to start being a little quicker to get in early and first to make some of these things. And they were getting more expensive. So we had to put more money in early.

Jace But Masterpiece Theatre was still public television. Yes, it was funded by Mobil Oil. But it did NOT have the big budget of a commercial network.

Nancy West It just can’t compete. It just can’t, if we’re talking just about money. But MASTERPIECE has other strengths. And it uses those as leverage.

Jace Masterpiece Theatre’s other strengths were its reputation and the relationships Eaton already had with the British production companies.

So with fewer frock dramas and increasing competition…Eaton had to get creative.

One of the projects Eaton helped get off the ground? Andrew Davies’ Middlemarch — starring Rufus Sewell.

Sewell was cast as Will Ladislaw in one of his first-ever roles in television.

Rebecca Eaton I remember the producer was a lovely man named Louis Marks. And I said, ‘Louis, who is he? I don’t know, are you sure he can do this?’ And Louis said, ‘Yes, he can do it.’ And Louis’ wife Sonia said, ‘Oh, yes, Rebecca. He can do it,’ because Sonia recognized the gorgeous manliness of Rufus Sewell and his great mind. He’s a very, very smart guy, which I think is often an ingredient in these performances. It’s looks, yes, but it’s the understanding, a deep intellectual and emotional understanding of who the character is that makes you just you can’t take your eyes off from when they get to work.

Rufus Sewell I mean, I don’t wanna look a compliment in the mouth. That’s very nice to hear that, and you know, some of that I find bewildering to hear and some of it quite like, you know. But I’m always gratified when one thinks that either my brain is in any way connected to my work, especially when I was wildly bluffing for the first couple of weeks.

Jace Sewell might have been “wildly bluffing” but he, along with the rest of the talented cast – Juliet Aubrey, Douglas Hodge, Robert Hardy – completely nailed it.

At a time when contemporary shows ruled and costume dramas were rare on television, Middlemarch was an unexpected smash hit.

Here’s Andrew Davies again, the man who wrote the Middlemarch adaptation–

Andrew Davies The newspapers were saying this is exactly the kind of thing that the BBC should be doing. And then when we followed through with Pride and Prejudice, Pride and Prejudice actually got big viewing figures and was really popular.

Jace Pride & Prejudice, starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, wasn’t a Masterpiece Theatre co-production…

Rebecca Eaton But I thought, we’ve already done Pride and Prejudice. We had done a BBC version of it, a six-parter, oh, I don’t know, 15 years before,something like that. We don’t need another Pride and Prejudice. I don’t think we need, we should be spending our money on new things. So I said no.

Jace And A&E…said yes.

Jace How did Pride and Prejudice end up performing sort of critically or financially when it aired on A&E?

Rebecca Eaton It was a complete hit. Why are you asking me these questions? You’re so cruel. It was a complete hit. It was a hit in the UK. It was a hit here. Everybody was talking about it. Everybody loved it. I loved it. No, it was. It’s too bad.

Jace It was official… when it came to British drama, Masterpiece Theatre was no longer the only game in town.

But Masterpiece Theatre’s biggest problems were still to come. They were about to lose their only sponsor, making any hope of a comeback 10 million times harder.

More on that… after a quick break to hear from our sponsors.

—

Jace In the late 90s, Masterpiece Theatre was in a funk.

There was competition, no one was making Masterpiece Theatre-y shows…

But, at the same time, Masterpiece Theatre was still airing popular, award winning series – House of Cards, Traffik, Middlemarch… and even, The Buccaneers.

Rebecca Eaton It was kind of a dream come true.

Jace The Buccaneers, which aired in 1995, felt right at home on Masterpiece Theatre. It was an adaptation of Edith Wharton’s classic novel. It was luxurious and romantic. It was a costume drama.

But there was something that made The Buccaneers different. Edith Wharton’s novel was classic AMERICAN literature… not British.

Henry Becton And it was almost impossible to get the Brits to do that. They felt, at least the BBC felt, that it was part of their mandate to explore British literature. Not so much American.

Rebecca Eaton There could be an American Masterpiece Theater in the blink of an eye, if that were the way the world turned, but it wasn’t turning that way. So just to have a little bit of the camel’s nose under the tent of having the British put a lot of money into making an Edith Wharton novel, made my red, white and blue heart sing.

Jace The Buccaneers was a BBC co-production that traced how wealthy American heiresses used their money and wiles to marry their way into British nobility. It starred up-and-coming actors like Carla Gugino and Alison Elliot.

And audiences liked it… It led to Eaton producing “The American Collection” –  seven adaptations of American novels that aired on Masterpiece Theatre in the early 2000s.

“The American Collection” even brought comedy legend Robin Williams to Masterpiece Theatre… well… almost.

Rebeca Eaton This one really hurts.

Jace The story… goes like this — while on vacation in Maine, Eaton went to the library and pulled a random book off the shelf: Mark and Livy by Resa Willis.

Jace Turns out, it was a biography focusing on the marriage of Mark Twain and his wife, Livy.

Rebecca Eaton It’s a beautiful story of the trajectory of a marriage between two people. I loved it.

Jace And so… Eaton worked with fellow American TV producers to get Mark and Livy made into a miniseries.

Rebecca Eaton And I knew immediately who should play. Mark Twain: Robin Williams. Because it seemed like his story, he had been a little drugged out guy who had met a woman who had kind of pulled him together, his wife at the time. So I flew to Los Angeles and spoke to his production company, gave them the script. They loved it, gave it to Robin. He loved it. I couldn’t believe it. This was all happening. And we were just on the verge of working out the details…on September 11th.

And the financing fell apart, Robin Williams changed his mind. His agent left and went to another agency. The whole thing which can happen, things can just dissolve. Yeah. Sigh.

Jace That’s the thing about Masterpiece Theatre in the 90s and early 2000s… for every show that had good ratings, there were even more shows that flopped or – like Mark and Livy – never even got off the page.

So now, we get to problem number three: Masterpiece Theatre just… wasn’t airing a lot of hits…

Jace To me, it seems like if you’re producing any hits, it means that you’re doing somewhat OK.

Rebecca Eaton Yeah, but a producer is insatiable, you want hits every week. And I think these hits were scattered through the schedule. They weren’t kind of the watercooler television that we had been.

Jace And another issue that they were having? The Buccaneers… Middlemarch… Traffik… These were miniseries: shows that would last for just a few episodes, tell a complete story, and then be… over.

Rebecca Eaton So they were really good shows, but they didn’t have time to build. An audience like Jewel in the Crown had built an audience week after week. And of course, I, Claudius and Upstairs, Downstairs, Upstairs, Downstairs year after year. So it felt like there would be little moments of greatness, but not, you know, sustaining. And that was worrying.

Henry Becton I would have to sort of. Boost Rebecca’s sense of confidence in the future because I had been through several such cycles, I had reasonable confidence that things would turn around. Suddenly, something would be a big hit in Britain and the fashions would change and we’d find ourselves with a lot of good material coming along.

Jace But year after year after year… that just… wasn’t happening.

And by 2000, the fact remained: the Brits weren’t making costume dramas; and ratings were going down.

So…Eaton had to keep trying new things– “What about airing contemporary shows? How about working with British producers to get things made? Let’s try American adaptations…” The stress was constant.

But…it was nothing compared to the year 2004.

Rebecca Eaton Ugh! 2004.

Jace In 2004, all of the Mobil money completely… dried… up…

But let’s back up a bit.

Remember, Mobil Oil – now Exxon Mobil – was Masterpiece Theatre’s ONLY corporate sponsor.

In 1995, Mobil actually decided to stop funding Mystery!

PBS filled in the financing gaps, but it wasn’t the same.

Then, in September 2002, the bottom fell out: ExxonMobil was pulling their funding… entirely.

Eaton remembers when she got the call.

Rebecca Eaton I thought he was kidding. I thought it was a joke. Somehow the traumatic reality that we were gonna lose this funder was so big. I interpreted it as being a joke.

Jace It wasn’t a joke.

Jace After 30 years and millions upon millions of dollars, Masterpiece Theatre’s main source of money was no more. They would have two years left on their contract, taking them to 2004… then nothing.

Meanwhile, PBS HQ again stepped in to help continue the series. But the reality was grim.

Nancy West So the early 2000s were a very, very rough time for MASTERPIECE. Mobil pulled its funding in 2002, and so Masterpiece Theatre had to go to the table, the PBS table, along with NOVA, the American Experience and many other shows and essentially beg for money. There was a real sense that Masterpiece Theatre’s days were over, critics were starting to toll its death knell.

Jace When I say PBS agreed to continue funding Masterpiece Theatre, I should be a little more clear: it wasn’t expecting to fund the series forever. This was a holdover loan until the staff could find another corporate sponsor.

But the sponsors never materialized.

Rebecca Eaton In other words, we had this fantastic series, which was then how many years old? 40, 30, 40 years old. A great audience. And we couldn’t understand why it wasn’t an easy sell.

Jace And by 2007, Masterpiece Theatre STILL didn’t have a sponsor.

Rebecca Eaton There was a cat food company that showed interest in us for a while.

Jace But not even the cat food company stuck around.

And then, Eaton had an idea. For years, her focus had been–

Rebecca Eaton Trying to find a sugar daddy among the CEOs of America who would say, ‘I love Masterpiece Theatre, you know. Yeah, I’ll give it in excess of $10 million dollars.’ So that’s mainly what we concentrated on, until I woke up that morning and thought, ‘Well, maybe we need to look a little deeper, maybe we need to look into how the series is perceived. Not so much how we perceive that because we love it, we think it’s perfect. But how do important people perceive it?’ And that’s when we really dug down and started to do rebranding.

Jace A rebranding… Eaton and the team decided that, at this point, their only option was to completely redesign the series.

And so, Eaton hired Susanne Simpson, as Senior Producer, to help lead the charge.

Susanne Simpson When I started working at MASTERPIECE it was in trouble…

Jace Simpson had been nominated for an Academy Award not once but twice. She also won two Emmys for documentaries she made while she was a producer at NOVA, the WGBH science documentary series.

Susanne Simpson And it was really kind of a spiral downward you know, I think it was usually about 40 weeks of programming and it had gone down to about 20 weeks of programming. And at that point, really, people lose track of MASTERPIECE and they don’t know when it’s on. They don’t know when to look for it. It’s not showing up every Sunday night like it used to. And it was really a tough time.

Jace Another person they brought on to help with the rebrand was Bob Knapp:

Bob Knapp It was kind of dire.

Jace Bob Knapp is the Managing Partner of Neubrand, a marketing company that specializes in this kind of rebranding work.

Bob Knapp It wasn’t hopeless, but it was, it was…it was not what it is today.

Jace Knapp went out and met with Masterpiece Theatre viewers, other network executives, and public television bigwigs to see what people really thought about the 36-year-old series.

Rebecca Eaton  And then he brought all this information back to us. And, you know, it was a giant mirror being held up. And it was very clear what the problem was, which was it’s not the content. People love the content. The problem is it is a beloved, dusty jewel. It’s hard to find.

Jace People were a little confused by the series: it had an irregular broadcast schedule, AND it offered up frock dramas, and contemporary shows, and mysteries…  which made it even harder for viewers to know when and where they needed to tune in.

On top of that, it was unclear exactly who Masterpiece Theatre was for…

Jace Do you think the idea that MASTERPIECE is, quote, “Granny TV” is deserved?

Rebeca Eaton No! Unless you have a very, very hip granny.

Jace Masterpiece Theatre typically courted an older audience, but it didn’t have to be that way. After all, people of all ages liked the shows.

Bob Knapp it was more about the sensibility of who the Masterpiece Theater viewer was and could be in the future. So the first was identify who it is that you are really trying to attract.

Jace And who they wanted to attract was a younger audience:

Susanne Simpson This is the name we gave it which was the Smart Girls, 35+, figuring these are the women who’ve read Jane Austen and Trollope and a lot of these books that we were making films about. So that was something that we decided we wanted to go for directly.

Jace And here’s how they were gonna do it–

First, they dropped the “theatre,” and called themselves, MASTERPIECE, full stop. For a nearly 40-year-old brand, changing their name was BIG.

Rebecca Eaton And it all felt very risky, too, because we were tampering with such an old favorite.

Jace They also tweaked the iconic theme song, and reimagined the opening title sequence.

Susanne Simpson A lot of that was my responsibility to make sure we had a new open and new music and we had the right look for everything.

Jace They also recruited three, shiny new hosts to introduce the different kinds of programs they aired: classic, contemporary, and mystery.

Alan Cumming I actually think more TV shows should do that. Should sort of prepare an audience for what you’re about to see. I think it’s a really clever idea. Gets them in the groove.

Jace Alan Cumming, fresh off his Tony Award-winning run on Broadway as the Master of Ceremonies in Cabaret, was a natural fit for Mystery!.

Alan Cumming It’s funny. There’s a phrase that I’ve used many times in terms of like certain characters I’ve played to engage with an audience. And that is, ‘You know you want to,’ like I even said that when I was the Master of Ceremonies in Cabaret on Broadway, and I had to sort of engage with the audience and try and get to come amd dance with me. I would say, ‘You know you want to.’ And I think that’s the same thing with this. I mean I sort of am the Masterpiece of Ceremonies again, but I think I feel it, I never say, ‘You know you want to,’ as MASTERPIECE host. But I feel I do it.

Soraya Nadia McDonald This sounds like a ridiculous thing to say, but he just sort of felt like this bad boy of PBS. I think there’s just sort of this permissiveness and sensuality in the way that Alan Cumming just exists, like he is so comfortable with himself in some ways he’s sort of like the absolute opposite of the kind of like well-to-do buttoned up image of Alistair Cooke.

Jace Alan Cumming was Alistair Cooke for a new generation, helping draw those “smart girls” to the series.

Of course, the up-and-coming English actor Matthew Goode could do that, too.

CLIP

Matthew Goode I’m Matthew Goode, and I’ll be your host this fall for MASTERPIECE Contemporary.

Jace As the host of MASTERPIECE’s contemporary strand, Goode helped propel the series forward, introducing titles like the Benedict Cumberbatch-led thriller The Last Enemy. 

And finally, Gillian Anderson, who had starred in the extremely popular sci-fi drama The X-Files, would be the host of MASTERPIECE classic for one season before Laura Linney would take over.

CLIP

Gillian Anderson I’m Gillian Anderson, and this is MASTERPIECE Classic.

Jace Anderson was set to kick off the rebrand by introducing a massive, multi title event: The Complete Jane Austen, the brainchild of longtime MASTERPIECE series producer Erin Delaney.

Erin Delaney It just so happened that we had four — she only wrote six novels, and we had four new adaptations of four of the six coming up.

Susanne Simpson And we thought, well, what better way to reach both our loyal audience and also a younger audience?

Jace MASTERPIECE planned to air all six Jane Austen titles back-to-back: Emma, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, and Sense and Sensibility… that’s five…

Susanne Simpson It was tricky because there was one particular Jane Austen television series that MASTERPIECE did not own.

Jace That was, of course, Pride and Prejudice, which had gotten away from MASTERPIECE more than a decade before.

Erin Delaney And that was one that I like every other self respecting Jane Austen, fan loved. I am too embarrassed to admit how many times I have seen the Jennifer Ealey / Colin Firth, Pride and Prejudice, but it’s a lot.

Jace But…they were able to buy the rights to air that as well.

Erin Delaney You have to start with that great story which Jane Austen never fails to provide. So I think I had real optimism.

Jace A new name, new hosts, a new vibe — this was MASTERPIECE for a new era.

And on January 13, 2008, that new era began.

MASTERPIECE was back.

Susanne Simpson We saw that we had a hundred and twenty five percent increase in women, 18 and plus. So that, I think, was considered quite a success. Then it became our job: ‘Well, how do we keep them?’

Jace How to keep them, indeed?

Of course, if you’re listening to this podcast, you might be wondering when I’m going to talk about that show. The one that redefined appointment television for the streaming age and changed popular perceptions of PBS forever.

Rebecca Eaton It was a mitzvah to have of all shows to be redone Upstairs Downstairs, which had defined MASTERPIECE for five years, however long it was on.

Jace Oh… you probably thought I was going to mention Downton Abbey, didn’t you?

Jace Ok fine… you’ve waited long enough…

Hugh Bonneville As I finished a conversation, I think, with Gareth Neame, our executive producer, early on, I said, ‘Who are you thinking of for the mother, for Violet?’ And he said, ‘Dame Maggie Smith.’ And I said, ‘Well, good luck with that, because she’s not going to do, is she?’

Elizabeth McGovern So I remember thinking not that it was gonna be a hit, but it was like, ‘Wow, I like this TV show!’

Susanne Simpson Actually every other broadcaster had turned it down, not believing that people wanted to watch a British made drama with accents.

Hugh Bonneville That’s why the ending of season one has threads that tie up and threads that remain open, because nobody knew whether it was going to come back.

Rebecca Eaton Then of course, the question was, would it work for our audience?

Susanne Simpson It was just a really exciting time at MASTERPIECE.

Jace We’ll get to the Upstairs Downstairs remake and the new-kid-on-the-block, Downton Abbey… as well as to the future of MASTERPIECE… on the next episode.

Making MASTERPIECE is produced by Nick Andersen. Rachel Aronoff is our story editor. Elisheba Ittoop is our sound editor. Sound design is by Jakob Lewis of Great Feeling Studios. The executive producer of MASTERPIECE is Susanne Simpson.

I’m Jace Lacob. Thanks for listening.