Despite having an interesting premise (the birth of modern retail in the UK by a savvy American entrepreneur) and soapy plots involving characters from the company boardroom to the loading docks, the series Mr. Selfridge has been hit-or-miss with me. Part of it, I fully admit, is my annoyance with Jeremy Piven as the lead, …
Apparently I wasn’t the only one who thought that Jeremy Piven, starring as the titular character in the Masterpiece series Mr. Selfridge, was simply too much. It wasn’t just his jarring American accent in a cast full of Brits. It wasn’t just his arms-open-wide showboating in every scene. It wasn’t even his awkward line readings. OK, it …
American entrepreneur Harry Gordon Selfridge grew up in poverty and cut his teeth working his way up at Marshall Fields department store in Chicago. But he had big ideas: bringing his American-style egalitarian attitude to London to create a revolutionary shopping experience. His department store Selfridges, opened in 1909, was a sensation, and has been …
The first couple decades of the twentieth century have been hot in entertainment these days, especially with the huge success of Downton Abbey. A world war kick-started rapid social change, and advancements in technology were introducing things like automobiles and airplanes that were becoming more and more accessible to the common man. During the first …