Upstairs Downstairs is axed, but did it really have to die?

Four weeks after the last episode of the second series, the BBC has quietly announced that it won't be recommissioning Upstairs Downstairs. The revival of the 1970s period drama in December 2010 was initially a success, drawing 7.5 million viewers for its Boxing Day debut. The finale of the second series, however, could only muster around 4.5 million viewers the night it was broadcast. Not good enough for a Sunday night period drama on BBC1, and six million viewers fewer than Upstairs' ITV rival Downton Abbey.

There was not exactly a huge clamour by viewers to keep Upstairs Downstairs, despite an impassioned campaign here on the Guardian's series blog and on the Radio Times and BBC websites. People who loved Upstairs loved it very much. There just weren't that many of them. Upstairs' Neil Jackson, who played Spargo the Downstairs chauffeur, summed it up when he tweeted: "Not good enough viewing figures, I guess." Facebook provides an eloquent demonstration of the whole sorry business. The Save Upstairs Downstairs page has 51 likes. The page for Isis, the dog on Downton Abbey, has more than 1,000. When a labrador is getting better ratings than you, it really is time to give up.

So what went wrong? From the outset Upstairs Downstairs failed to capitalise on the rivalry with Downton Abbey. They were slow to produce a follow-up to the successful first outing and by the time the second series aired, momentum was lost. There have been constant murmurings of "Not fair!" from the Upstairs camp, as if Downton Abbey never had the right to exist. Jean Marsh, who devised the original series with Dame Eileen Atkins, has always implied that Downton was deliberately commissioned as a spoiler for Upstairs Downstairs. She once said: "The new Upstairs Downstairs had been in the works for about three years. We were trying to sort out 40 years of rights and then it also started - Downton Abbey. It might be a coincidence. And I might be the Queen of Belgium."

But Upstairs was also dogged by a series of practical problems. Atkins quit the second series two months before filming began amid rumours that she was unhappy with the scripts. Her character Lady Maud Holland had been a real draw, a worthy rival to Dame Maggie Smith's dowager countess in Downton Abbey. Lady Maud had to be hastily killed off, swiftly followed by Solomon her pet monkey, who died in an accident involving a gas-proofed pram.

Meanwhile Jean Marsh suffered a minor stroke, which meant most of the second series had to be rewritten and her character barely featured at all. This made the connection with the 1970s series even more tenuous. As a viewer, this was always one of the most frustrating aspects of watching Upstairs Downstairs: you weren't sure whether you were supposed to remember it from first time round or not. Older viewers compared it to the original and were unhappy. New viewers always felt a bit left out.

The second series also had one very basic problem: it saved the best until last, by which point it had shed 2 million viewers. The early episodes of series two were weak and difficult to follow, and by the time the plot had picked up, no-one was watching and Channel 4 was already airing Homeland in the same time slot.

Fans of Upstairs Downstairs (and I became one by the end of the series) will miss it for superb performances from Claire Foy as the posh bitchy sister from hell, and Alex Kingston as the eccentric bluestocking lesbian aunt. The nail in the coffin? I always said killing that monkey was a mistake. Or can it really be true? That after Downton, we really are all costume drama'd out?