‘Downton Abbey’ adds to its list of great dames

DOWNTON Abbey returned to South African TV screens last Sunday and the second episode gets under way at 9pm tonight on DStv (BBC Entertainment).

In the first episode last Sunday, South African viewers saw some lastminute twists and turns before the long-awaited wedding of Matthew Crawley, heir to the Downton estate, and Lady Mary. Tonight fans of the series are likely to be treated to more fireworks as the strong-willed couple settle in to married life, and to learn more about whether Matthew will accept or decline a second inheritance, from the family of his former fiancée.

Also, expect some plotting between female family members to ensure the estate’s financial future.

However, South Africa is a series behind Britain, where season four begins next month. In that series Dan Stevens, who plays Matthew, has been written out of the script. His character died in a car crash during the Christmas special last year, in an episode which South African viewers will see at the end of the series currently running here.

The first episode of the fourth season will open in Britain on September 12

Dame Kiri Te Kanawa will play an opera singer in ‘Downton’. And not just any opera singer, but the legendary Dame Nellie Melba, the great Australian diva

with the family still mourning Matthew’s demise. The new season seems to have turned back the clock and the series better resembles the glorious first season.

These are stories about a family and its servants. There is love both spoken and concealed; there are new allegiances; new rivalries upstairs and down; old scores to settle; the reappearance of an old flame.

Even the dowager countess, still played with withering perfection by Dame Maggie Smith, has a surprising new cause to champion. The spice and intrigue comes from picking out the glorious detail of English country life in the early 1920s— not from the appearance of deformed foreign cousins, spines broken in the war and miraculous medical recoveries.

Lady Mary (played by Michelle Dockery) looks divine even in black as she mourns Matthew’s death and nurses his baby — the tiny George, who could be the on-screen birth of a Downton dynasty that will last for decades to come.

There are many new characters in the series starting in Britain next month, including another dame, opera singer Kiri Te Kanawa and Paul Giamatti, who won an Emmy for his title role in the mini-series John

Adams, about the second US president. Giamatti is to play a loose-cannon playboy brother of Dame Kiri, who plays . . . an opera singer. And not just any opera singer, but the legendary Dame Nellie Melba, the great Australian diva. So a great singing New Zealand dame is playing a great Australian one. Dame Kiri is delighted to be making an appearance in the allconquering drama series.

“I could not say yes fast enough,” she said, and one can see why. Dame Nellie Melba was one of the greatest stars opera has produced. She had a grand, flamboyant style that even the biggest performers of today cannot match.— © The Daily Telegraph, London