Mr Selfridge Hdtv 1-10 [VODA]

Mr Selfridge, episode ten, ITV, review

Lara Prendergast reviews the final episode of ITV's Mr Selfridge

2.5 2.5 out of 5 stars



Lady Mae (Katherine Kelly), Harry Selfridge (Jeremy Piven) and Rose (Frances O'Connor). Photo: ITV

By Lara Prendergast

10:03PM GMT 10 Mar 2013

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When Mr Selfridge arrived on our screens, it offered a visual feast for the dark winter evenings: glamorous showgirls, handsome window dressers and gorgeous displays. But, as the increasingly endearing Harry Selfridge (Jeremy Piven) found out in tonight’s final episode, things don’t always look so pretty when you hold up a mirror to them.



Indeed, everyone was forced to take a long, hard look at themselves, not least because Lady Mae’s former lover Tony Travers (Will Payne), had written a play featuring thinly disguised versions of the series' principal cast. The play starred Selfridge’s spurned mistress Ellen Love (Zoë Tapper), and its central character, Horace Spendrich, was a brassy American parvenu!



But Selfridge held his head up high. Society may have been laughing, but as Mr Crabb (Ron Cook) pointed out the following day, these things rarely last long in people’s minds. It did bother Selfridge’s soppy wife Rose (Frances O’Connor), though. Their relationship has been turbulent for a while, but when the play’s venom began to be directed at her (and her relationship with artist Roddy Temple), it proved too much and she left for Chicago with the children. Selfridge is no idiot, though; he knows that in London society, abandonment by his family will look bad. Expect a campaign to win them back when the series (which was re-commissioned halfway through the run) returns.



On the shop floor there was time for reflection, too. Widower Mr Grove (Tom Goodman-Hill), had been having a secret affair with dark horse, Miss Mardle (Amanda Abbington). However, when Doris (Lauren Crace) revealed that all she wanted in life was to be a wife, Grove seems to have considered his options and unexpectedly taken her up on the offer. Doris didn't seem at all prepared. “I don’t even know what he likes for tea,” she admitted.



One of the show’s strengths has been the inclusion of contemporary real-life characters, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Ernest Shackleton, Louis Blériot and Anna Pavlova. Tonight’s special guest was a royal. The ever-calculating Lady Mae (Katherine Kelly) had managed to persuade King Edward VII (played by David Calder) to go on a shopping spree in Selfridges, which he relished: “I haven’t had this much fun in a long time!” exclaimed the leisure-loving monarch. It was a coup for Selfridge too, giving the store the all-important royal seal of approval.



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At the beginning of this series it was the female cast members who impressed, with Kelly, Abbington and Tapper putting in particularly strong performances. But Jeremy Piven developed into an excellent leading man; his Selfridge was both flashy and self-conscious with dimensions that some of the other characters lacked. Meanwhile Frances O’Connor’s Rose became increasingly flaccid. Why did she simply run back to America? Where was the big fight?



Mr Selfridge has certainly been slicker and more exciting than The Paradise, BBC One's rival period department-store drama. However, much like Downton Abbey, it’s not the most nuanced offering. If the next series wants to keep viewers hooked, it must offer something more subtle than sumptuous window displays.