Cosy start for last hurrah at Downton
The beginning of the end of Downton Abbey opened with one of those scenes that made you realise how much you will miss it – and it invoked nostalgia for a distant era: namely 2010, when the first and best series of the ITV drama aired. Tantalising echoes of that first series were accompanied by repetition, implausibility and a heavyhanded use of the historical backdrop. But it bodes well for cosy Sunday night TV, even if it often feels more like farce.
Review
Downton Abbey
★★★ ★★
The beginning of the end of Downton Abbey (ITV1) opened with one of those scenes that made you realise how much you will miss it once this sixth and final series has galloped off into the sunset. The local hunt was gathered outside the great house and we were treated to the whole panoply of picturesque nostalgia, circa 1925: red coats, huffing horses, the dignified creak of butler on gravel, crisp panoramas of English countryside. It was like Jeremy Corbyn’s most fevered nightmare.
I felt nostalgia of a different kind at play, too, in the longing for another distant era: namely 2010, when the first and best series of Downton aired.
No instalment has quite measured up since and it looks as if this will be no exception, providing an enjoyable if flawed finale to the convoluted tale of the Crawley family’s fortunes.
There were tantalising echoes of that first series throughout. Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) was once again threatened with a newspaper exposé of her extra-marital shenanigans, and she once again had her legs disgracefully akimbo – although this time it was just because she was no longer riding her horse side saddle.
Turkish diplomats, English landowners and other suitors were conspicuous by their sad absence. As a feminist, I totally support a plot arc focusing on her flourishing career rather than her romantic prospects. Absolutely. It’s just that as a viewer, I hope the drama puts its foot to the floor and brings out Henry Talbot (Matthew Goode), lowly racing car driver and this season’s lady bait, soon:
Downton is at its best when Mary is struggling to balance duty and desire.
Meanwhile, the latest blackmail plot captured a few of Downton’s enduring weaknesses: repetition, implausibility and a heavy-handed use of the historical backdrop.
Smirking chambermaid Rita Bevan (Nichola Burley) waited an inexplicably long time between catching Lady Mary sharing a hotel room with Lord Gillingham (Tom Cullen) last series and darkening Downton’s substantial doorstep.
Moreover, when she did so, she was less believable servant out to make a quick buck, more wool-hatted personification of class warfare, like Sarah Bunting the socialist schoolteacher before her. She bit into Lady Mary’s breakfast toast (is nothing sacred?) and bragged that “your lot” – the upper classes – were finished. In the best period dramas, historical context is like a skeleton: it gives the whole thing its shape and structure, but stays invisible. In Downton, it is a hulking great exoskeleton, a shell worn on every character’s back. It’s as if Thomas Cromwell in Wolf
Hall went about declaring: “I live in a perilous age riven with religious strife!!” Elsewhere, plausibility was further strained when Mrs Hughes (Phyllis Logan) enlisted the help of Mrs Patmore (Lesley Nicol) to ask if her fiancé Mr Carson (Jim Carter) would expect, at their advanced age, full marital relations. Arguably, the only thing more awkward than two geriatric virgins talking about sex would be three geriatric virgins talking about sex.
As ever, though, if you could suspend your disbelief, there was much to enjoy in these scenes. Mrs Patmore, who had easily the best lines of the episode, observed that “a problem shared is a problem halved – or doubled,” while Mr Carson creaked and groaned and voiced his love like a sentient wardrobe with an inner passion.
There was also cause for celebration in the rapid denouement of the overblown Bates murder trial saga. A woman confessed to the crime that had cast suspicion on to both Mr and Mrs Bates (Brendan Coyle, Joanne Froggatt), and their relief that their ordeal was “finally over” was matched only by my own. We may face the slow-burn woe of their struggle to start a family, but at least the histrionic threat of the hangman’s noose has come undone.
What, then, will be the cliffhangers this series? Let us ignore the battle between Isobel Crawley (Penelope Wilton) and her cousin, Violet (Dame Maggie Smith) over the administration of the local hospital, which feels too dull for so magnificent a warrior as the Dowager Countess – rather like sending paratroopers out to a squabble in a bun shop.
There have been promising hints about not only Lady Mary’s love life but also that of long-time lonely heart Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael), while everyone’s favourite Machiavellian gay under-butler Thomas Barrow (Robert James-Collier) is poised for some kind of existential crisis.
All in all, this bodes well for an autumn of cosy, Sunday evening entertainment, even if it often feels more like farce than tour de force.
‘The only thing more awkward than two geriatric virgins talking about sex would be three’