Welcome back to Downton
Another chance to catch one of TV’S classiest successes
Damnably addictive. Mastercheese Theatre. Topsy turvy upstairs-downstairs drama at its jolliest. Guilty pleasure, what? Downton Abbey, said The
New Yorker, “goes down so easily that it’s [akin to] scarfing handfuls of caramel corn while swigging champagne.”
Forget for a moment how utterly appalled the gentility who inhabit the upstairs quarters of Downton Abbey’s 100-room manor would be at the mere thought of swigging champagne (it’s meant to be sipped, dear boy, not guzzled down like some navvy’s filthy brew);
Downton Abbey’s vivid characters, with their litany of romantic entanglements, have become as familiar as any in popular fiction today.
PBS has dressed Downton Abbey up into its biggest hit in years. And, beginning Feb. 22, Canada’s Visiontv will repeat the entire series, starting with the premiere episode that introduced an unsuspecting North American public to Robert Crawley, the Earl of Grantham, played by Hugh Bonneville, Lady Mary Crawley, played by Michelle Dockery, and a host of others.
Never mind that last month’s season premiere on PBS averaged 4.2 million viewers, double PBS’S prime-time average, and 18 per cent higher than Downton Abbey’s first season. Never mind that
Downton Abbey is now seen by more viewers than those who watch Madmen, Boardwalk Empire, Breaking Bad and Homeland. And never mind that those numbers failed to include those viewers who watched later replays, or recorded the series on a PVR.
Downton Abbey owes its creative origins to a chance meeting between Gosford Park screenwriter Julian Fellowes and U.K. film mogul Gareth Neame. Neame asked Fellowes if he had ever considered doing anything similar to
Gosford Park on television, and the idea for Downton Abbey was born. Neame has his own theory as to why
Downton Abbey has struck a chord with viewers in the age of American Idol and Two and a Half Men.
“It’s chock full of story in every episode,” Neame said. “All 20 characters have their own stories in each episode. Some are resolved within the episode; some of them continue.
“It’s a quintessentially British genre — this idea of a country house in a period in history. Many, many such productions have been made over the years, but very, very few of them are original writing.
“I think audiences love this sort of social interaction. The rules seem absurd to us, and yet we’re intrigued by them.”