Opening shots of Episode 1 — a train rushing through the countryside (much made of new machines in Edwardian era)
Dear Friends and readers,
Only one year behind! I’m so often decades behind (I fell in love with the Poldark mini-series and books 2 years ago), that to be 10 to 15 years late is nothing (I’m just now mesmerized by Prime Suspect). Sir Toby Belch (Shakespeare’s Twelth Night) said to be up betimes (past midnight near dawn) is to be up early, so I say to be belated by one year is to be on time. To be accurate, I’ve blogged twice about the mini-series already, once in response to Ebert who apparently identifies with Mr Carson, the butler (Think of me as the dead or absent maid) and once in response to the first episode of the second season this time where I or someone like me might figure in the Downton imaginary (Downton Abbey as Amos ‘n Andy). These though were personal; tonight while not forgetting that all art is propaganda (Orwell), and remaining sincere and frank, I mean to be generally descriptive.
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Episode 1
Among the first shots of Maggie Smith as Violet, Dowager Duchess
I began by capturing four long far shot stills, the opening of the train rushing through forest and countryside, past stream in the gloaming of the evening, the first shot of the Dowager Duchess (quite like a portrait) and Robert Crawley, Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) and present duchess, Cora, Lady Grantham (Elizabeth McGovern) seen walking against the green sward as Mr Carson (Jim Carter) walks up to them to give them the message from a telegraph:
I enjoyed it the way I often do costume drama, mini-series rhythm I should say emphatically — so when I am critical it should be understand I am evaluating. (I don’t understand how it reduces enjoyment to understand what we are taking in.)
It had all the familiar motives and plot-devices of the type, too much so. The story was Pride and Prejudice: Lord (Hugh Bonneville — very good insofar as he could be) and Cora, Lady Grantham (Elizabeth McGovern made too coy — she simpered – she was playing a stupid or not very bright woman and that’s how she did it) had no sons so the entail goes to another relative.
As episode opens, this near heir has died on the Titanic and now the eldest Grantham daughter, Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) who was engaged to him is free. She couldn’t give a damn and does not want to wear mourning. The second daughter, plainer, clearly did like this now dead heir and cousin, Lady Edith her name (Laura Carmichael), at any rate resents Lady Mary’s indifference to his demise. Now the estate and money to support it (which comes from Cora, Lady Grantham’s portion) will go to a third cousin, once removed. Lord and Lady have 3 daughters to marry (5 was perhaps too obvious and cost more) and now it’s not so easy. Lord Grantham will not fight the entail as it’s useless he and his lawyer, Murray think.
Much Trollope here — though the name Crawley signals Thackeray’s presence (as in Vanity Fair). Cora — from Trollope’s Pallisers — was married by Lord Grantham for her money and he grew to love her as the years passed. A little dialogue of reminiscence tells us that (like Lady Glencora McClusky), this American Cora’s dowry was enormous. Fellowes is also remembering Palliser’s heir, Lord Silverbridge’s marriage to an American young woman, an Isobel (a popular name in the 1880ss). The situation by Trollope delved into and developed at much much great length (at least 7 long novels)i is presented shallowly, superficially here. In the first three episodes allusions to Trollope make it clear Trollope’s novels are an important source: “it was just like a Trollope novel!” says one character in Episode 3. And as with Austen’s P&P, Fellowes just makes is a shallow sketchy paradigm. Cora was not a common Edwardian name — though Isobel (Mrs Crawley, played by Penelope Wilton) was and the first name of the American heiress just referred to).
A neighborhood hunting club run from Grantham (from episode 3)
The larger encompassing structure is patently Upstairs/Downstairs, only so much more luxurious. The castle is Highclere in Hampshire. The servants up early, serving like crazy, the kind of imitative pattern, the important butler, Mr Carson (Jim Carter replacing Gordon Jackson as Mr Hudson) who cares intensely about the family and decorum; a housekeeper, Mrs Hughes (Phyllis Logan replacing Angela Baddeley as Mrs Bridges who though was also cook). So it went. I note the hero, exemplary & dominating male in the first season of the 1970s UD was the butler; now it’s the rich Lord Grantham.
Some of it very well done. The shots wonderful. Not so much the dialogue which needed more work and the actors more rehearsal. Viewers can pour what they want into these paradigms, come away with what lessons they want. For example, the servants’ rooms so bare, the space they exist in not theirs at all (and this is made explicit more than once); they get up early and have to rush about cleaning, serving the family. The cliches make it broad and easy to take in. Buyt Maggie Smith as dowager did not ham it up and delivered with quiet pizzazz whatever bon mots were going.
As in the 1970s a chief maid, Rose (Jean Marsh, one of the people who conceived of the original series) was central so here Anna Smith (Joanne Froggart) and her side-kick, Gwen (Rose Leslie). To them are added a scullery maid, Daisy (Sophie McShera) there to be bullied by Mrs Patmore, cook (Leslie Nicol). An extra “good” footman, here naive (as he was not in the 1970s) William Mason (Thomas Howes). Everyone given second names — as they were not at first in the 1970s Upstairs Downstairs.
There were new elements and they were striking and effective. For example, the story of a disabled man: the new valet, Mr Bates (Brendan Coyle) who the servants are put off by and two, Sarah O’Brien, Lady Grantham’s lady’s maid ((Siobhan Finneram) conspire to blacken, even trip up (done by a sleaze of a footman, Thomas Barrow played by Rob James-Collier) and insist is not keeping up his end.
So two sets of scenes placed in the plot-design swirl around this: we see how Lord Grantham does the right thing, nearly firing this his ex-bat man who desperately needs a job, at the last moment says, no, he stays. Now this was touching and progress: we are to feel for the disabled and see how he’s given a hard time by his society. But the way the program avoids real toughness was here too. To limp is an easy disability to feel sorry for. Nothing non-conformist here. He was even a Vet (Boer War). Who went after him: the mean servants so it’s the lower orders with the apparently careless unfeeling Cora backing them up. Still we did feel the lack of flexibility towards someone disabled, and it was done with quiet tact.
Another: the highest person in the episode was a Duke of Crowborough (played by Charlie Fox [easy to confuse with Lord Evelyn Napier, played by Brendan Patricks]. Crowborough who has heard the heir of the family has died and rushes over to put his bid in for the hand of Lady Mary. Straight out of Trollope this character with the important except that he was a total lout and shit, not just vacillating over his place in the hierarchy. He decamps hastily when once he learns Lady Mary not to inherit. This does suggest a sort of attack on hierarchy. Against this Grantham has a noble soul. Napier is also regardless of other people’s feelings (an important value in this mini-series). Crowborough takes Lady Mary for a walk in the house to the servants’ quarters upstairs and to the side of the house. She was made nervous and uncomfortable by this; she is aware they are people and this is their at least temporary private area, if bare, cold, stigmatized. The whole sequence very believable. Crowborough couldn’t care less about perhaps barging in. These people have no dignity, no humanity like his to him. He also couldn’t care less about the landscape — didn’t want to go outside for a walk. A bad sign. The name is allegorical too (a crow, referring both to the instrument and the bird — such birds are intelligent by the way).
A third: open homosexuality. We discover the shit footman, Thomas is a previous lover of this Duke’s — not just homoerotic as in Trollope. The scene is humanly speaking between two ugly people. Duke trying to take advantage, and Thomas then countering with a blackmail attempt. Duke grabs his letters back and throws them in fire. No evidence. It does move too quickly and crudely — one of the flaws of this first season.
Blackmail was a problem for gay men. These are both nasty cold mean people and that has nothing to do with their gayness — but it should be acknowledged that to the popular audience the film-makers are clearly reaching for this could be an anti-gay person sequence. I think it’s really partly progress. At least this alternative sexuality is visible. We see the young men kiss and homosexuality becomes another form of sex going on. This is something we would not have seen even in the 1990s even – and certainly not on TV.
And of course I like Matthew Crawley, Dan Stevens (a favorite with me since the 2008 S&S and his role in Line of Beauty and the good psychiatrist in latest Turn of the Screw) and Mrs Crawley, his mother who despite her misgivings leaps at the chance of this inheritance and a place in county society, complete with house and servants. The new heir and his mother are first seen in a middle class flat in Manchester. He a lawyer (gasp! works for a living — Trollope stuff there).
Telling perhaps the typology? in that 2009 Turn of the Screw, Michelle Dockery was the imprisoned and exploited governess, with Stevens as her failed savior. Will these roles be repeated in this permutation? Stay tuned.
Conventional in these sorts of things the person I found I could bond easiest with was Anna. I liked Mr Bates too. A kind of sub-couple to Lord and Lady Grantham and this is new too — if the servants were made primary at first in Upstairs Downstairs, there was no equivalent of the Bellamys and the son, while prone to get maids pregnant, was sensitive, intelligent, no lout. I can see that parallels stories will be developed throughout the series. I found myself interested by Edith and Daisy.
Julian Fellowes wrote the originating script for Altman’s Gosford Park; Fellowes will be the one continual presence throughout the episodes. He must have written them as a group before they began shooting because I can see this is not a matter of new stories for each episode, with the series evolving as it moves on in the way of the 1970s Upstairs Downstairs; from inception this has some over-arching pattern.
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Episode 2: comic idealism; a celebration of community
Anna and Gwen talking earnestly to one another in their attic room
I like the second episode better than the first — though I begin to see how much of this mini-series is unreal or exaggerated. It was funnier than Episode 1 and all about the individuals in the house — developing them as individuals.
What was so good was the feeling generated. It reminded me in feeling
and ideals of the two recent Cranfords — Jim Carter and Brendon Coyle were in those too. They were (as this mini-series is apparently going to be) a celebration of community. In that it opposes itself to much we find ourselves surrounded by today, as did those Cranfords. This message is much more explicit than anything in the older Upstairs Downstairs (much the subtler series) and probably functions as an antidote to our world today. This is a series where we learn we cannot go it alone. So, what’s not to like? That this socialistic message is got up withni the aesthetics of simplified justified hierarchies?
Against that which easily may be read as justifying conformity and coercion to bow to the group will, I’d say the note is tolerance more than giving up individual wants or desires. Were it the later, the tone would be more melancholy. We see the characters tolerate one another — and with kindness sometimes too, and even dignity. Comfort there, and Bonneville as Lord Grantham makes this explicit in his speeches just in case we didn’t get the message.
Matthew Crawley bicycles to work
Living in the US, I don’t get to see these film adaptations regularly, or we get only a select group of them so I can’t tell whether this outlook is found in other of these concoctions (combinations of books and themes and plot-designs and characters) since say 2005 or 6. I did see it adumbrated in the 1999 Aristocrats mini-series which was really a kind of Little Women in luxurious-rich neoclassic taste 18th century guise.
I concede that I don’t know enough about medical operations and suspect what we saw Dr Clarkson (David Robb) perform with the help of Mrs Crawley — save a young villager’s life — was much simplified; a number of the problems the lower class characters had were too easily solved by the active benignity of the upper class ones. It was rather like a child’s fiction, built to create little parables: Lord Grantham just dismisses the blackmailer; Matthew Crawley gets a new job as a lawyer in the town so easily; Mrs Crawley has the training of an expert nurse, but the number of instances of kindness, of giving in to accepting the “other” was genuinely appealing. How Mr Carter’s past (low class, low status wandering family) was accepted by Mrs Hughes and Mr Bates forgave Mr Carter. Crawley learning to make his butler feel useful — that was a bit much to take. We are to be grateful when the privileged allow us to serve them hand-and-foot. Still, the point made was we all need to be useful, to be appreciated. Not much allowed in 2012. I melted. And they were careful not to allow the dowager duchess (the type straight out of Trollope – obtuse, snobbish, carelessly making life hard for others yet we are to like her) is not allowed to do any real harm or inflict any real hurt. The other characters stop her in time.
Small personal delights: Daisy, the young scrubmaid under the thumb of the hard-worked cook is so sweet and when (usually sneering) Thomas danced with her, it was touching. She is of course showing her youth in preferring the manipulative hypocritical Thomas to the good- hearted innocent William. Daisy. I wanted to name my older daughter Marguerite & call her Daisy. My mother was horrified. It was to my mother a low class name — whoever imagines the US is class-free lives in a thick fog of delusion. I’ve been sorry I didn’t call her Daisy but maybe it would’ve been a stigma. And Mrs Crawley’s first name is Isobel. So is my younger daughter — my father said it had a regal ring to his ears (!). I do like the name Anna too — even considered it in dreams of a third daughter. I’m watching out for any Alices or Lauras or Veronicas 🙂
None of these negates my knowledge of my mother-in-law’s experience as a lower governess in a great house where the last feeling that was dominant was good-fellowship according to my mother-in-law. To be in service was to be in servitude. A reality check from Pamela Horn, The Rise and Fall of the Victorian Servant: a maid collecting water from pump. perhaps helped by groom. One of many laborious tasks carried out by servants of the era:
Someone who could keep this size-staff was unusually well-off in Victorian times; note how each person is made to hold the implements of his or her work, his or her insignia:
One girl remembered her first job as a “tweeny” as “hell:”
But I did not suffer at the hands of my emloyees, but at the hands of fellow servants. There was far more class distinction and bullying and misery below stairs than can be told in a letter.
It’s worth repeating my mother-in-law had a nervous breakdown at the end of a year and one-half and after World War Two a 5 and 1/2 full time day job in Woolworth’s was riches (a salary!), freedom (time you controlled once the job was done), private space compared to what she had known. See also Another Maggie Smith.
Downton Abbey is escapist fairy tale.
Taken on its own terms, they are not spending enough time on the shots. This second episode the actors appeared to be much more rehearsed, but I discovered the movie does not lend itself to spontaneous snaps. You have to be alert to capture a perfect one and I got hardly any. In the case of Ang Lee say or Joe Wright you can snap any time any way and it comes out lovely, graceful, or pointed in meaning in a satisfying way. Not here. I did get one of Penelope Wilton meeting for the first time with Lord Grantham They shake hands: both are exemplars of the good people doing their best — fitting in and so on.
The first meeting of the two branches of the Crawleys (Penelope Wilton’s open face is perfect)
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Episode 3: rape slid over
Lady Mary as very pretty seen by the men at the hunt
True to Trollope’s attitudes we have an ambiguous rape slid over in this one. This one was more melodramatic again and there were a few story lines which are going to be spun out over at least this season.
Lady Mary is emerging as heroine: I suppose it’s easier and inevitable than make the 2nd, Lady Emily or 3rd Lady Sybil (Jessica Brown-Findlay), the heroine. Lady Mary is taken in (I allude to Austen’s Mary Crawford who says marriage is a “take in”) by the handsome rakish Turkish aristocratic type, Kemal Pamuk (I can’t find the name or actor in the list on IMDB), brought along by Napier, another Trollope male type (Fellowes may also reads Napier who was a conservative political historian and politician). Lady Mary (Trollope again) did not fall in love with Napier (unlike John Grey from Can You Forgive Her? not very worthy) but instead goes for the “wild” man (I am alluing now to an opposition between types of men as Trollope suggests young women see them in Can You Forgive her?). We are to believe women want males who punish them.
Downton Abbey is made by men (directors all and producers almost all men). So it’s not surprise that when the Turkish guy with no connections that the young woman of the house hardly knows sneaks his way into the her room and forces her down on the bed, she just melts.
Things go awry though — and if the rape is not presented accurately — there is poetic justice. Pamuk blackmails his way into her room. Thomas tried to force sex on this, lout No 2, who did not yield but himself coerced Thomas (lower status, more vulnerable) to let him into Lady Mary’s room after threatening to expose Thomas as a gay male. After a rough-housing scene with Lady Mary, Pamuk appears to drop dead after fucking or nearly fucking Lady Mary (we are to believe she began to want this bullying treatment). A real scene might have had an attempted rape and he die. Then he would have deserved it. I wondered if in an earlier script it was not) and next thing she is running frantically because what if he is found in her room? Her reputation!!! to make a long story short (not done truly comically because they didn’t have the nerve), she, her mother and Anna drag the corpse to his room to be found therein the morning.
So Lady Mary is set up for blackmail, exposure, and shame.
Dan Stevens as Matthew Crawley begins to look like decency itself. Alas, for reasons I don’t get except Lady Mary is pretty (but so is Edith), Matthew prefers Mary to Edith These are a very conventional group of characters. Edith likes Matthew Crawley and takes him round to churches. It’s clear he is hankering after Lady Mary though he enjoys the tour. I wish for her to meet an archaeologist and go on digs. I liked the moments of their tour around the village and its churches.
An unusual moment for Edith thus far: she invites Matthew to come with her and is reaching out; most of the time she is presented as sullen and too eager for a man
The full secondary story here was of Mr Bates buying himself an iron frame and trying to make himself walk in a non-limping (non-crippled) way using it, but only torturing himself and ending up with a much wounded leg was touching. His physical weakness parallels the young man who died suddenly. But (part of the series good feeling) everyone who learns of this cares and is kind to him. Lord Grantham wants to help him. Finally he succumbs to Mrs Hughes’s insistent kindness; she gets him to reveal his leg to her. The closing scene of the episode is him throwing the ugly device away. The moral: he has to learn to accept himself.
Mrs Hughes and Mr Bates on the edge of the Downton estate
But remember in the real world he would have been fired probably unless Lord Grantham really felt for him as a batman in the Boer war. I wondered if in the original script more was made of this WW1 experience.
Then there’s a third story set afoot and done with intelligent quiet irony: Gwen, the lower maid, aspires to be a secretary, to leave “service.” The other servants (especially Miss Obriend) ask if she’s above them, the Duchess thinks it’s nicer in a great house than job for long hours in a dark office. This is supposed to be funny. I liked how Lady Sybil felt for Gwen. Most houses were arduous repressive hard work and humbling — the typewriter Gwen has saved up for and practices on at night is like telegraph, we saw at the opening of the first episode, a sign of this dawn of the modern era.
Her story is given the usual false turn we see daily when she is told by Mr Bates she can change her life completely. Mr Bates tell her this, but we see she doesn’t believe it. Doesn’t know how to reach anyone, and she is told the space she lives in is not hers, not to practice typiing on or keep her machine in. She’s allowed to on sufferance. It is her property, that is what is recognized.
Gwen’s typewriter
I noted all the intimate scenes of master/mistresses and servants: talking, advising. The (good) servants are the fount of wisdom in this mini-series. Good thing we have some less nice people among the servants too — though it’s pernicious that the worst people in the house are Thomas, a homosexual footman (whom Mrs Patmore describes as “troubled”) and Mrs O’Brien, the lady’s maid, dressed in witch-like black with an ugly hat (so too does Edith have bad hats — see the Hats of Downton Abbey). A piece of misogyny (recalling daytime soap operas) where a lower class woman, is the worse person around.
This is from a later episode in Season 2 where Miss OBrien had been humanized: she warns Mr Bates
But again see the underlying jarring values of this series: steadily anti-bullying, anti-exploitation of others in just about every area shown, and steadily idealizing the wealthy and powerful. Only the two bad guys (Thomas and OBrien) are mocking bullies and they are rendered harmless by the goodness of the Granthams who stay above the fray and instinctively make the right decisions. If you believe all this, I’ve a bridge I could let you have dead cheap …
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To conclude, Downton Abbey (Highcleere mansion) in Trollope is Gatherum Castle (Sudeley castle).
Trollopians will remember that Lady Glen and Plantagenet dislike the gigantic Gatherum with necessary huge staff intensely; it’s a huge barn, un-home-y, a task to operate. They open it up when he becames Prime Minister because it is big enough to entertain rich & powerful people in large groups, to have parties, balls, golf and arrow-shooting going on all at once. It can function as a hotel. At the same time, Plantagenet as Duke of Omnium finds he is forced to spend money making it look fashionable for others; the renovations strike him as ruining the gardens, absurd. He hides out in it.
Lady Glen as Duchess becomes a hostess (and of course he does not like
that). She is in collusion with her housekeeper, a French cook (often drunk) and doesn’t know all the staff anymore. Some of the funniest ironic sequences are of the Duke wandering about in the landscape (he is an idealized character) and the Duchess managing her hotel.
We see the purpose of such a house is politicking, to show how
powerful & influential you are. And here we have another lacunae in
DA: not only is it understaffed, it has no use. Lord Grantham were he real would be politicking, using his influence; there would be scores of men not just showing up (inexplicably) for a hunt, but for a hunt as part of many days’ networking. We get nothing whatever of this. Fellowes sticks strictly to domestic life. And that is not real. Even rich people don’t throw their money away. The house was a central of power through patronage.
By contrast, Altman’s Gosford Park was smaller, the equivalent of Matching Priory, the place the Pallisers called home. Matching is big enough to politick in too (you have small groups of more intimate friends). The Palliser film-makers used Sudely Castle for both: they photographed it so that it would look smaller for Matching Priory, & showed its full extent from another angle for Gatherum.
Trollope himself never misses a chance to satirize in a kind of
saturnine way what Gatherum is. In Dr Thorne (the 3rd Barsetshire novel) Frank Gresham is made miserable there, snubbed the first time we go there — with him. Fellowes erased this.
Lord and Lady Grantham greeted by staff (Elizabeth McGovern another of the many actresses who starve themselves to be so frail)
Next Downton Abbey blog: Season 1, Episodes 4-6
Ellen
Ellen And Jim Have A Blog, Two 
when I rose from bed and put on my computer and looked at my email I found two other versions of this request this morning: ” Ellen … do you have any idea as to how I might view the first episodes of Season 2? I just finished Season 1 on Netflix and I am hooked. But I didn’t think of recording the new season until this past Sunday night (I think that was episode 3). If you have any ideas, please let me know. Thank you for sending the link to the blog!” I answered off blog. E.M.
Just a quiet note, but I think you have Evelyn Napier (Brendon Patricks) confused with Charlie Cox’s character Duke of Crowborough. It was Crowborough who had mercenary designs on Mary and a past relationship with Thomas, not Napier, who’s only character fault is that he’s boring. It’s otherwise a very good post. I’m rather fond of the series, myself and I’m glad to know …. that people still like that sort of thing.
Best. [name omitted]
Another person who prefers to remain anonymous: “Historical Fiction is on the rise … I think people see what we are missing in our own society, but aren’t sure how to get it back. The costume dramas appeal in the same way … “
Mary Siringo: “I have just now seen my first episode of “Downton Abbey,” which I believe I will become interested in. I purchased both seasons from Amazon, but have only seen one episode on TV thus far. I just finished reading your blog on the first three episodes. Your photos are lovely, and I am wondering how you go about taking these stills. Do you just use a digital camera close up to the TV screen? Or is there a special technique?”
Linda: “I saw your “thank you” to me in the comments of someone’s blog about Downton Abbey, and I’ve also read your blog posts on it. Since you’re interested in costume drama, I wanted to recommend one you might find of interest. It’s called Lilies and is set in 1919 — but is about as far from Downton as you can get, as it involves a working-class family (of 3 daughters, coincidentally) in Liverpool. It’s soap-opera-ish in its own way and the Liverpudlian accents are strong, but I think it provides a salutary contrast to DA.
Link to first bit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8afBLAtA3_I
Linda”
Dear Linda,
I just watched the video. It’s delightful – the only drawback is I need subtitles 🙂 I’ve noticed that recently in the effort to be realistic some of these British films are almost indecipherable. I used subtitles for Red Riding, two of the episodes of Prime Suspect. But I got on with it: I see the strong feminism too. Heidi Thomas did the Cranfords and like Ann Pivcevic (she was producer for the 2008 S&S and also Miss Austen Regrets and before that script editor for Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Tom Jones 1998) produces unusual films.
I don’t mind soap opera aesthetics at all. I defend them vigorously whenever I’m given the opportunity — admittedly rare :). But I did on blog on them:
http://www.jimandellen.org/trollopeblog/810.html
Ellen
Here’s an essay from the NYRB on Downton Abbey by the art and film critic, James Fenton. “Jumping the shark” is a phrase that Jim said comes from British TV. In some long-running mini-series it’s said there was a character who literally jumped over a shark. This is taken to mean in desperation to invent a new turn of plot you opt for something cheap or ludicrous or unreal. Fenton is actually sympathetic: he is watching the series but has to be evaluative critical; at the end of the essay he mentions a book I’ve seen cited before as the inspiration for the original Upstairs Downstairs series: like my mother-in-law fairly described as a woman of real intelligence forced into service (servitude); there’s a curious feminism about this ex-maid’s book which reminds me of a recent mini-series in the UK (I was told about on my blog), Lilies by Heidi Thomas (who did Cranford Chronicles which starred Jim Carter and Brendan Coyle) which I sent along here last night. See comments just above.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/mar/08/abbey-jumped-shark
My daughter Laura (anibundel) said the phrase is not British “it refers to the episode of Happy Days where the Fonz waterskiied over a shark–which was the nadir of that series. When it was first introduced into pop culture about ten years ago, it was specifically to say that a show had reached its lowest point. Today it has become more expansive to refer to any show that has verstayed it’s welcome on TV.” To read what some bloggers have been saying about DA this mini-series may have overstayed its welcome.
E.M.
“Ellen, sadly, “Jumping the shark” can’t be blamed on the British. It happened in an episode of Happy Days, in which Arthur “The Fonz” Fonzarelli was surfing and managed to jump over a shark because he’s so cool.” Carrie
I should say no group of people has a monopoly on stunning stupidity 🙂 E.M.
It’s true. Though I have enjoyed watching Downton Abbey, every time I get up from it I can’t believe I’m liking it. Rather than “jumping the shark,” though, I’ve been thinking of a term that should be much more familiar to audiences of British television, because it’s the raison d’etre of Dr. Who–“fan service.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_service Carrie
I also get involved. I know very well it’s like a black person watching Amos ‘n Andy and I’m not there (dead maid, long since wiped out) and the one person I knew who experienced it said it was horrible (my mother-in-law, a lower governess) yet I am drawn in. I even recognize the cornyness and unreality. Fellowes has more talent than people credit him with, the actors are superb, the photography and costumes beautiful. At 2 am in the morning what’s not to like — maybe we’d be better served by better soap opera types (Lillies, Cranford) but they are often cancelled and only this country house reactionary ideology makes it over to the US. E.M.
The acting really makes it for me, too. I’d watch that cast in a soap opera about anything. Carrie
The actress playing Mrs Patmore brings me to tears every time. When she sat on her bed waiting all alone for the doctor to come to do whatever it was to her eyes, I lost it …
“I watch Downton Abbey mostly in disbelief – both in how much they get wrong and that I am still watching it. But mostly the acting makes up for the dire script and conniving at unbelievable circumstances and situations! As I once commented before, it is Ok to watch on a Sunday evening when one is tired and doing something else…. And incidentally Julian Fellowes, the writer, also annoys me. I obviously like scratching at sores!” Gwyn
My favorite blogger compared the 2-hour episode to eating a whole bag of Oreos. That kind of sums it up. Judy Shoaf
My daughter, Laura, just sent this to me — for my amusement I guess. The series is deliberately trivialized so as to deflect thought:
http://www.vulture.com/2012/02/print-out-vultures-downton-abbey-paper-dolls.html
I’m going to suggest something different: what keeps us watching is that it is the soap opera form. (Some of the acting is wooden; let’s face that it must be given the dialogue and what’s implied about the characters.) The soap opera form perfect for TV (which we watch as part of our lives through recurring incidents over our days), and all its characteristics even when presented in this simplified debased way hold us. I’ve read some essays defending and describing these “fictive systems: a limited cast of characters, no closure, repetition, a community which is self-perpetuating, big events every once in while to which all the characters go or participate in. The house holds it altogether in these house soaps. And so we sink in regularly at a regular time; it’s a testimony to a peaceful life that _we_ have.
That theory works for me, Ellen. Like any soap there are often threads in Downton Abbey which intrigue….. Gwyn
Yah, I think it’s the whole way these stories and characters are presented to us. We talk about it as “being hooked” so it’s not just one person’s performance. Ellen
Ellen, “jumping the shark” did not come from British TV. It came from a
scene near the end of the American series “Happy Days,” starring Ron
Howard who was upstaged by Henry Winkler as The Fonz. The Fonz did jump a shark (literally) on a vacation trip. Judith Learmann
Ellen,
This is so funny because I was actually thinking Downton Abbey had “jumped the shark.” The phrase actually comes from the American TV sitcom “Happy Days” in which the cast in one episode went to California and the Fonz actually jumped over a shark while water skiing – it was seen as a stunt to get viewers and attention, and since then the phrase has become associated with that moment in a TV series when it takes a downhill turn, often by trying to get publicity or using cheap gimmicks to get attention.
Yes, Downton Abbey definitely “jumped the shark” in this last episode [he refers to Season 2, Episode 8].
Tyler
Ellen, I really enjoyed reading this – it is a while since I saw these episodes, but reading this brought it back. Having seen two seasons now, I think that some of the idyllic landscape of the first one may have been being set up deliberately so that it could be torn apart by the First World War, which dominates the second series.
I would definitely say stay with it… I feel as if the series has got better since the start, although I do agree in many ways it is a soap opera and of course it is flawed at times. Still, over the course of two series Fellowes is able to show different sides of the characters, and people like Miss O’Brien and Thomas become more sympathetic in some episodes, not simply villains, while the Earl (although still an idealised figure) eventually shows a snobbish side and doesn’t care about every servant as much as he does for Bates. Edith is really becoming a secondary heroine by the end of the second series – she is one of my favourite characters. I also like both Mrs Patmore and Daisy, who really grows through the two series – but, anyway, you have a lot to come.:)
The second series of the new ‘Upstairs Downstairs’ started at the weekend in the UK, but I wonder if it will be successful, as it is hard to remember who all the characters are from more than a year ago when the first episodes were shown. Also Eileen Atkins has now left the show.
Judy, I’m very glad to hear from you — your voice and shared tastes — again. In some ways the series did improve; the characters are deeper because stayed with longer, and sometimes scenes are much longer. I do like Edith and it’s a real relief to read someone else who does. In the 1st episode I hoped she would be a secondary heroine, but in truth, is not there much hostility towards her, sometimes more animosity than towards OBrien. It’s not too much to say I feel puzzled and (as with some of the recent mockery of Penelope Wilton’s character) hurt about this. She was the one originally with heart; but over the course of the seasons she’s the stab-in-the-back, sullen, man-desperate one. I probably partly wrote my most recent outburst over the use of the Martin Guerre & Quasimodo paradigms because they were directed at her:
http://misssylviadrake.livejournal.com/75062.html
I’ve not been able to see past myself or this depiction to understand why, only keep thinking she’s a stereotype on daytime soap opera and if I could see her there I would understand. As I said, it’s Mrs Patmore who has occasionally brought me to real tears.
I’ve not seen the new UD. It’s not come to the US. Each of them seems to have “her” great Dame actress, no?
Ellen
How interesting! I’m glad Netflix has the British version (although they also feature a brief starting announcement by Laura Linney), and I will probably use that for series 2 when it’s available. I agree: there are way too many commercial messages on PBS now. But at least they’re not interrupting the programs–yet.
Thanks again!
MJ
Downton Abbey is a cottage industry:
http://anibundel.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/downton-abbey-trading-cards/
Those invitation cards call to mind Sondheim’s A Little Night Music where the characters are invited for a “weekend in the country:”
E.M.