Oh, it isn’t surprising that Patsy Byrne is eligible for this column and not the other one. After all, she was playing the nurse in Romeo and Juliet the year I was born. What’s a little more frustrating is how hard it is to watch her in pretty well anything she’s done. I actually saw her on the big screen once, in Les Miserables, where she plays Valjean and Cosette’s servant, and I own the production of Strong Poison where she plays the cook, but it’s been years since I’ve seen I, Claudius, and the internet generally assumes that if you’re interested, you’ll pay for it. Which I’d love to, and might if people support my Patreon or Ko-fi, but it wasn’t something I was going to go out of my way for this time.

Patsy Byrne has played a lot of nurses and cooks, really. I don’t know how many. But one of the few things I’ve managed to find to watch specifically to write about her has her playing a cook in a British mystery story—I believe her employer’s house guest is about to be murdered, in fact, which makes her the cook in a household where a guest is murdered at least twice. It’s quite the niche she’s filling there. Still, I’m quite sure that there are a lot of British women of a certain look who have made a living playing British servants.

Of course, I’m not entirely sure on a lot of them. A lot of roles of “Mrs. So-and-so.” Some from works of classic fiction—in addition to the Sayers, she’s done a couple of Dickens adaptations, The Silver Chair, and even Chekhov, in one of her first TV performances. The Cherry Orchard. She played the maid. She’s played at least three nannies that I can judge based purely on character name. And as I say, that’s without being certain of all the “Mrs. So-and-so” types.

Naturally, her most famous role is one of those three nurses. Specifically Bernard, nurse to Queen Elizabeth I on Blackadder II. (Yes, that’s canonically her name. From the episode “Bells,” which is her very first appearance.) Now, it’s true that Queen Elizabeth I had a nurse who continued to care for her into adulthood. In fact, she died at age 82 still in the queen’s household—Elizabeth paid her funeral expenses—when the queen herself was 57 or so. However, Blanche Parry—aside from having a woman’s name—was a very intelligent woman who was well known for being able to help fight the queen’s displeasure. But still, I think it’s rather unusual for a royal to keep their nurse as a servant in adulthood, even a royal woman.

It’s the kind of character that you can’t develop in the US. It’s hard to imagine an American woman—particularly a white woman—making a late twentieth century career playing servants. In her episode of Alleyn Mysteries, she’s one of two servants for a household of two people. One of whom is likely going to get kicked out, but there will still be two servants in the house. And in fact he hires a secretary. This is not a role that you get in the US; at the most, you get a single maid who lives at home. That’s not the roles Patsy Byrne played.