Thomas and Sarah
This spin-off of Upstairs, Downstairs (1971) follows Sarah (parlour-maid) and Thomas (chauffeur) some time after leaving service with the Bellamys.
- 1979-1979
- 1 season
- A&E Home Video
- Drama
This spin-off of Upstairs, Downstairs (1971) follows Sarah (parlour-maid) and Thomas (chauffeur) some time after leaving service with the Bellamys.
Season 1 Episode Guide
13 Episodes 1979
Episode 1
Birds of a Feather
52 mins
A near tragic car accident between mechanic Thomas Watkins and nanny Sarah Moffat reunites the onetime couple. Sarah has lied, claiming she is a widow in order to get a church-sponsored position as a baby nurse. Thomas is an auto mechanic trying to obtain a French auto dealership, but as the company requires that he show a stable marriage, he has lied, claiming himself as a family man. Thomas wants Sarah to pose as his wife, but she refuses and demands that he really marry her. Thomas assumes the baby boy she's taking care of to be their child and kidnaps him for his own benefit. When he discovers that his own child has died, and he is guilty of kidnapping, his considerable powers of persuasion are put to the test in order to extricate himself from this latest escapade.
Episode 2
The Silver Ghost
50 mins
Lord Bellamy entrusts Thomas with selling his Rolls Royce Silver Ghost, an opportunity to make a profit for the mechanic. He is able to interest the prosperous Sid Politzer, a pub patron with an interest in Sara who is now a barmaid there, in buying it, but Politzer and his brother are also interested in his services as a chauffeur to drive an aristocratic couple on the continent. Through Madge, Sara discovers that the Politzers are using the car and THomas to transport stolen jewelry to the continent, but can she intercede before THomas falls afoul of the law?
Episode 3
The Biters Bit
50 mins
Thomas' Silver Ghost Rolls-Royce runs out of gas, and while he's getting the needed petrol, a car full of aristocrats headed for a costume party dressed as servants assume that the pair are of the nobility too. Thomas and Sarah go along with the misunderstanding and both find themselves romantically involved with members of the gentry.
Episode 4
The Vanishing Lady
50 mins
Thomas is very unhappy without the missing Sarah, so Madge's friend Gilbert, a former policeman, uses his resources to locate Sarah, who is performing in a local music hall. Now reunited, she and Thomas are looking to sell the garage and get into show business. The marquee act in the hall is an aging and tubercular Chinese magician, so they use the money from the sale to purchase the secret of his disappearing act.
Episode 5
Made in Heaven
50 mins
Thomas is hired to caretake the London house of an aristocratic family vacationing on a yacht in France, he uses the opportunity, along with Sarah, to use the premises as a front for a matrimonial and dating service. The enterprise proves quite profitable and becomes so successful that the couple runs the risk of trouble with the law.
Episode 6
Alma Mater
49 mins
Sarah is an under-maid in an understaffed private boys' school run by Dr. Groom-Crobie, who overcharges his students' families while shortchanging his charges and giving them inferior materials and food while fattening his own pockets, Thomas applies for a job there and is made a teacher although he has no training or expertise.
Episode 7
A Day at the Metropole
49 mins
Thomas' mechanical skills with racing cars earn him a holiday as the seashore Metropole Hotel, where Sarah meets an old chorus girl friend. Sarah originally presented herself as a French maid to Thomas' new employer, a rich sportsman, but neither is willing to acknowledge the sordidness of their former profession. Despite THomas' abilities, Sarh objects to his risking of his life as a driver in order to win a prestigious race for his new employer.
Episode 8
The Poor Young Widow of Peckham
51 mins
While trying to win a photography contest run by a local tabloid, Thomas ultimately makes up Sarah as a poor, lower class widow and submits the picture. Unfortunately while out in the rain, he comes down with double pneumonia, and the prognosis is grim. Through unusual circumstances, his photograph wins first prize and Sarah is able to avoid being evicted from their flat, but when Thomas recovers but is unable to parlay his camera skills into a newspaper job, Sarah earns some money from answering an ad placed by a kinky couple.
Episode 9
There Is a Happy Land
50 mins
Thomas and Sarah take the ill-gotten gains obtained in a jewelry swindle and open up a successful haberdashery shop in a nice neighborhood, where Thomas' charm soon builds them a lucrative business and loyal clientèle. He proposes that they emigrate to America, but changes his mind when he finds out that she is pregnant, and both are thrilled to find themselves accepted as upstanding members of the community by their neighbors. However, things take a sinister turn when Thomas finds out in a chance meeting with the doctor that Sarah has been lying to him.
Episode 10
Return to Gethyn
51 mins
Thomas becomes homesick for his small Welsh village and decides to journey back there for the first time in ten years accompanied by Sarah. Sarah finds Thomas' provincial mother and married but childless reverend brother cold and aloof. She is shocked when a village girl calls on Thomas to present him with what she claims is his ten year old son born out-of-wedlock, a child Thomas initially swears he knew nothing about but later admits is his. Sarah resents the family's hypocritical piety and decides to investigate the circumstances of the illegitimate birth on her own.
Episode 11
Putting on the Ritz
50 mins
Returning from Wales in a first class train berth, Thomas and Sarah vow to make the most of their personal attributes and utilize their wits to make their fortune. With only twelve pounds left, they set up shop in the dining room of a posh hotel posing as an auto entrepreneur and a French countess. Unbeknownst to them the other couple they take up with are also frauds, and the only person who knows the truth about them all is an enigmatic waiter who doubles as a lip reader and inexplicably offers Thomas the use of his high rent townhouse.
Episode 12
The New Rich
60 mins
While Thomas and Sarah have the use of the Andover town house, they hire a staff of servants and give a dinner to impress the hoi polloi as the keep open opportunities to financially benefit from their improved condition. Having been servants themselves, the couple make o pretense about being nouveau riche, and their egalitarian attitude toward their domestics creates friction with Wilson their old school, class-conscious butler.
Episode 13
Love Into Three Won't Go
51 mins
Thomas and Sarah go into the service for a depressed and dissipated employer. By the time they arrive at his home, they find it dirty and unkempt with aristocrat Richard DeBracey in an alcoholic haze with a death wish. Although he had canceled their services with the agency, they remain long enough to discover the source of his melancholy... the desertion of his wife and the accidental death of his young daughter. Their own good cheer seems to work wonders on their employer and enables him to undergo a positive personality change.
