Evie Eliott Comes Home

There are certain truths that every British television fan must come to terms with sooner or later:

• Many British programs, like their American counterparts, are crap
• If you really want to see the best offerings from across the pond, you have to invest in a region free DVD player
• Chances are extremely good that your favorite British TV actor is woefully underpaid by Hollywood standards.

It’s this last fact of life that often lures performers from Over There to Los Angeles to try their hand at breaking into Hollywood. The number who actually make the transition to any degree is depressingly small.

One who has made that leap is Louise Lombard, best remembered Stateside as Evie Eliot, one half of the 1920s era sister act of  couturiers in the 1990s BBC series The House of Eliott. (The French & Saunders clip above not only captures the flavor of that costume drama beautifully, but it also features Lombard and co-star Stella Gonet.) More recently, she moved to LA and has become a regular on CSI as Det. Sofia Curtis.

Recently the 37-year-old actress returned to England to star in the BBC’s Kiss of Death as Kay Rousseau, a world-weary detective still smarting from being wrongly (or possibly rightly) hauled up before a jury for the death of her baby daughter. You can learn more about the series and what Lombard’s been up to in this article from The Independent. I will leave you with her initial impressions about being back in Ol’ Blighty:

“I hadn’t been back for a good two years, and when I first returned I had a moment of culture shock. We were rehearsing on Tottenham Court Road, and when I mooched along to the sandwich shop at lunchtime, I was taken aback. Everything looked so smart and so different from what I had been used to. It looked like a film of London.”