BURLINGTON SQUARE

This is another one of Laurence Meynell's slight flirtations with the England that there always was, full of Fortnum & Mason creature comforts back in the unhurried Edwardian past. Burlington Square is a very protected, very privileged little group of eight houses in the coastal spot of Bright-sea. Number Four is owned by Ivor Pelham Standish, a ""well-preserved"" if almost too settled fifty-year-old who lives alone except for the holidays of his seventeen-year-old son Colin. Number Five has just been purchased by a Mrs. Dillon-Stuart, capricious in her ""trousers"" and quite beautiful underneath them even if she fails -- after she tries hard enough, goodness knows -- to seduce the self-righteously innocent Colin. . . . No more energetic than haft-time during a game of croquet, but lots of teas, hot baths and small talk with a shade of social inflection which could carry the viewers of Upstairs, Downstairs between installments.