Downton Abbey
November 6th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
While not usually a fan of drama on television, the last seven weeks have seen me develop a severe dependency on Downton Abbey. It’s quite hard to explain why. Objectively, the show is slightly ludicrous. The drama is increasingly over the top, the dialogue is quite clunky in places and historical accuracy is but a far flung dream and yet, I’m utterly obsessed with it.
The story features the titular Downton Abbey as the set for an exploration of Edwardian life. There is the family of the house, Lord Grantham, his wife Lady Grantham and three daughters; Mary, Edith and Sybil. There is also Lady Violet, Lord Gratham’s mother, who is played by the wonderful Maggie Smith. The driving plot of the series is inheritance: Only a man can inherit Downton and unless one of the girls manages to don a convincing moustache that means the estate passes to the closest male relative.
The first episode opens in April 1912 with the death of the heir, Patrick on the Titanic. In steps Matthew Crawley, a third cousin lawyer from Manchester who is… dun dun dun…Middle Class. Basically the rest of the plot and the audiences interest thenceforth revolves around whether Mathew is going to marry Mary and learn to use to fork properly. Mary and Mathew were nearly engaged, then weren’t but were still secretly in love each other. Then Matthew went to war, got engaged to someone else, got paralysed, got better but now feels too guilty to break up with his finance for Mary as she stuck by him when he was injured. Phew.
The other family drama comes in the form of Sybil, the youngest daughter who is currently in the process of running away with the socialist Irish chauffeur, and Edith, the classic middle child who nobody, including the plot, pays attention to unless she’s trying to out-bitch Mary. She never will though, Mary is an ice queen when she’s not shagging people to death. Ah Mr. Pamuk. Lord Grantham keeps trying to feel up one of the maids and Lady Grantham has had so much plastic surgery she looks like her face is going to fall off. That last one may not actually be an in-series drama. Finally there’s Lady Violet who doesn’t create much drama herself but gets all the best lines.
Is that enough drama for one house? Oh you silly innocent little thing, we haven’t even got to the servants yet.
Mr Bates is Lord Grantham’s valet, he joined the house in the first episode, and everyone hated him because he has a limp and fell over a few times. In the second series, the writer seemed to forget about the limp in favour of his horrible ex-wife who keeps showing up threatening to go to the press about the “shagging to death” incident from series one. The wife is now dead, apparently by suicide but Mr. Bates is acting awful shifty about it. He is engaged to Anna, a housemaid, who’s job is to stand around moping over Mr. Bates.
There’s the baddies, Mrs O’Brian and Thomas, lady’s maid and ex-footman respectively, who exist purely to do mean things for no real reason. Example: Mrs O’Brian left soap on the floor for Lady Grantham to slip on, causing a miscarriage. She did it because she thought she was going to be fired. Thomas is generally just a bastard to everyone else in the house but in the last episode spent all his money trying to get into the black market. It didn’t work too well.
There are lots of other characters around, the butler Carson, a few maids, Daisy an assistant cook who had a lot going on earlier in the series with a now-dead footman called William, but the only drama-causer left at the moment is Ethel. When the house was being used as a hospital earlier in the series Ethel got knocked up by one of the recovering officers. The guy refused to acknowledge her after, and promptly died. Now Ethel is trying to convince his parents to help her, and us of why she is still in the show.
You should be up to speed now.
This unfortunately doesn’t even begin to cover the glorious madness of Downton Abbey. The plot twists are bonkers. One episode featured a man claiming to be Patrick, the original heir, with a horribly burned face and a Canadian accent, saying he’d had amnesia for the last 6 years. Matthew had been paralysed, yet he leapt out of his wheelchair to save someone from falling and was dancing by the end of the episode. There is murder, marriage, spying, shagging, parties and paralysis. The writing and acting is so over the top it belongs more to Dallas than Downton and I doubt there is one historical fact correct other than there was indeed a first world war. The whole series revolves around world events for no reason at all. Months pass between each episode yet the plot advances not one bit. Mary has been engaged for about 4 years now, and they barely seem to have had a conversation. It’s the silliest show I’ve ever seen, yet come 9pm on a Sunday I am in a lather of excitement. Will Lady Sybil and Bryson elope? Will Mary and Mathew finally get together? What is going on with Mrs O’Brian’s hair?
I’ll be live-blogging the last episode tonight at 9pm at https://twitter.com/#!/emsug
