Right to show that rape

THE rape of lady’s maid Anna in Sunday night’s episode of Downton Abbey came as quite a shock to many viewers.

Part of the programme’s appeal is that it’s often like t he Antiques Roadshow with actors.

But the genius of Julian Fellowes is his capacity — just when we think we’ve got the measure of his creation — to make his drama the most talked about TV event of the week. Critics have argued that the rape was just too shocking for gentle Sunday viewing. But they forget that Downton is ground-breaking in all sorts of ways.

The very fact it devotes just as much time to the servants’ hall as to the action above stairs, and visits tragedy and pathos on both, makes Downton much more multilayered than it is fashionable to admit. Which is why we love it — and the controversy it gene generates — so much.

PERFORMING her latest hit on America’s Today Show, Miley Cyrus took time out from her frantic co couplings with a p person dressed as a gi giant mushroom (don’t as ask) to tell the show’s pr presenter, Matt Lauer, th that she would keep up th the...