This moving episode was made in 1974, almost as long after World War 1 as it has been since it was made, as a period drama, it hasn't aged, of course. The acting is perfect, melodrama played with a stiff upper lip, British stoicism and timbre, fitting the times.
Yet importantly, when, newly ennobled Lord Bellamy speaks to shell-shocked Edward, on leave from the front and finds him shell-shocked and feeble, he helps and supports him.
We also see the charismatic entrance of Mrs Hamilton (Hannah Gordon) finding Bellamy unhelpful, but ultimately chiselling away at both him and the Admiralty to get her education project off the ground.
In the end, as his Lordship speaks to Hazel Bellamy (Meg Wynn Owen) after the differing New Years Eve celebrations upstairs and downstairs, the latter noisy and robust, the former sedate, not actually lasting til midnight, 1917 beckons, Bellamy rather portentously states the future is a long way away. And to the question, whether they might one day become one family, at all levels, he thinks they may already have done so.
From the future, to Eton Square in 1917 via 1974. Whatever the future may have seemed like, we certainly get a beautifully acted and scripted episode from the past.