The plot of one of the most popular BBC television comedies of the late 1970s and early 1980s hinged upon the fate of a minor country house and estate. To the Manor Born was first broadcast on 30 September 1979 and from the beginning the show received consistently high viewing figures. The narrative arc of the series would have been familiar to anyone who had taken an interest in what had happened to country houses over the course of the previous century. In the opening episode, recently widowed Audrey fforbes-Hamilton took control of Grantleigh Manor, the ancestral home with which her family had been associated for four hundred years. She discovered that her late husband's debts had put the house at risk. She subsequently lost the house at auction to Richard DeVere, whose personal fortune derived from the company he founded, Cavendish Foods. Despite the pedigree implied by these names, DeVere in fact represented new money, having risen from roots in the East End of London. Audrey resented his ascendancy as lord of the manor and looked on, with disapproval, from her new home – a cottage on the estate.

The final episode of the first series of To the Manor Born was watched by nearly twenty-four million people, making it the fourth most popular television event of the decade. The show was recommissioned for a further two series, before it finally ended in 1981. The success of the situation comedy showed, perhaps, that the UK television-viewing public intuitively understood distinctions between old and new money, and the humorous potential in the reversal of traditional class roles. The series appealed to the same underlying consciousness of British class culture that had driven the success of films such as Joseph Losey's 1971 adaptation of L. P. Hartley's The Go-Between, or the television drama Upstairs, Downstairs, first broadcast in the same year. The Go-Between, filmed at Melton Constable Hall in Norfolk, used the mise-en-scène of an Edwardian country house to tell the story of a love affair that crossed class lines. The film was a critical and box office success: Harold Pinter's screenplay won a British Academy Film Award, while Margaret Leighton was nominated for an Oscar for her role as the matriarch of the house.