Joanne Froggart — as Anna, my favorite heroine
Gentle readers,
Pray bear with me. Here is a handy linked-in list of my blog-reviews on Downton Abbey (and a few by others). I know the “categories” function is supposed to provide a useful archive, but in this and my other 2 blogs, instead of getting just the title to click and say 4 lines to see, the archives section reprints whole blogs, so it cannot function as a place where at a glance you can see the slew of blogs on a topic easily. You must wade through.
Hence this handy list. I wrote 4 blogs the 1st season of Downton Abbey; 4, the second season; and 9, the 3rd. I also link in anibundel’s The Hats of Downton Abbey, and Emerging Quaker’s Poltical Analysis. I did write 9 postings for each week of the second season and if I can get up the ambition and discipline I will make them into blogs before the 4th season is upon us.
For now you can find all the postings I wrote on DA at this select Trollope19thCStudies archive or this select Women Writers archive.
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Phyllis Logan and Hugh Bonneville dance — and so the second season concluded
Here are the first season’s:
Pride & Prejudice as UpstairsDownstairs with plenty of Trollope mixed in
The Making of Downton Abbey: journal blog
First Season, First Part Re-watched: the great benefits of a script and studying the shots
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Christmas special: Lesley Nicol, Rob James-Cellier, Siobhan Finneran
From the second season
DA everywhere: from Yemen to Scotland to Yorkshire, with Portrait Shots
Serial Story-telling, the Art of the Mini-series from Poldark to Downton Abbey
Slow Journeys through Passionate Dream Material: Poldark to Downton Abbey
Class and Literature: the sense of entitlement that matters
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Shirley Maclaine greets Michelle Dockery, Laura Carmichael, Deborah Findlay-Brown
Season 3:1 begins: an uneasy atmosphere
DA 2: the Abbey a Bourdieu Habitas?
DA 3: Cruelty so raw it took my breath away (Edith’s humiiliation)
DA 3:4: We all live in a harsh world, but at least I know I do
DA 3:5: Childbirth as risk, trauma; or how to get rid of a character
DA 3:6: the fallout; “don’t flirt with me Robert”
DA 3:7: to give way to them is to conform to the rules set down by the evil-minded
DA 3:8: The ending charity itself; or simply cricket
Cricket — Dan Steevens and Allan Leech
DA goes to Scotland: “Dreaming of a better life;” Mrs Hughes’s POV
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Dame Maggie Smith
The Hats: from I Should have Been a Blogger
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Political Analysis
The actors who play servants sitting on Ealing stairs talking: you can see Sophia McShea, Cara Theobald, Bernard Gallagher
A Plantation View of the World
Upstairs cast rehearsal at Highclere Castle: you can see Penelope Wilton, Elizabeth McGovern
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The scripts, together with a brief bibliography.
Ellen
Thanks for the link, Ellen. That piece really did a great job of summing up my feelings, too, about the series politics. Although I did have to wince when the writer asked something on the order of what do nationalism and socialism have to do with one another — perhaps I can accept their distance in our contemporary forms, but historically, obviously (e.g., Yeats’s feeling for the project of the Blueshirts) …
My suspicion is that Fellowes finds that challenging received notions makes up for continuing to adore the aesthetic and tradition of the grand English manor house. Like many, I have felt all along that the early portrayal of life in the manner was somewhat anachronistic in its open relations between upstairs and downstairs and its acceptance of flouting convention in the downstairs, but all in all this maps to the “aspirational” lifestyle shows (costume style) that are popular today on channels such as Bravo TV (e.g. _Real Housewives of Beverly Hills_), an intimate portrait filtered through the lens of _Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous_. The flirtation with the middle and laboring class ability to enter into that lifestyle is as much a part of our fantasy now as it may have been in the Victorian period (what with governesses marrying up, foundlings rising, and so on), except that we no longer require an orphan plot to explain the refined genetics and deserving inheritance. Sometimes it seems that we don’t require virtue to justify it anymore, either — although the series has been careful to establish virtue in those who have risen. In some ways, Matthew’s mother Isobel is a good example of an outsider who challenges the values of Downton Abbey proper without significant comeuppance — she even emphatically remained single in the presence of an eligible (replacement doctor) gentleman suitor. I have hope for her.
Kelly Searsmith
I know the woman who wrote the blog and she studies Nazism so she was equating “nationalism” with fascism, and there is a great difference between fascism (a corporate state backed by a fierce militarized police system) and socialism, like between say the US and the Scandanavian countries or what Chavez was trying for Venezuela :).
Probably Fellowes does think of himself as challenging received notions — just as Reagan to Bush have called their retrograde policies reforms and radical doings. I also agree that we see versions of DA on many of the TV programs as well as in Victorian novels. I like Isobel too, only she is endlessly mocked and we are to see how thwarted are her efforts. She never meant for Ethel to end up an abject cook pretending to be her own child’s nanny when she gets glimpses of him from afar.
Ellen
The loss of Siobhan Finneran a hard blow – she was the opposite ironic voice to the Dowager. But Fellowes has many friends and his show is approved by the establishment so he’d bringing in new people:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2013/mar/12/downton-abbey-series-four-casting-news
Tyler, if her words are anything to go on, she too tired of being presented the way she was, in her case “contemptible.” I agree as an actress she was a strong presence, and in the second season her character did become interesting, complex, but in this third season she was often a nasty insinuating slandering witch (even dressed that way).
For myself I’d love to see Matthew MacFayden in a role that crosses the ironic comic wastrel lord (Sir Felix Carbury) with the grave earnest male (Arthur lenham) and some of his passionate self (Darcy) thrown in. But who would want to be half-emasculated before the Princess Bride Mary. the great compromiser upholding the establishment. Fellowes has chosen relative non-entities (Ken dolls) for next season I see
Ellen
Fascinating stuff. In the third season we began to acquire some sympathy for the homosexual (and in past seasons thoroughly despicable) footman Thomas, but without him as a villain I don’t know who will step into the part. Also, the most sympathetic character in the whole 3 seasons, Matthew (and Christ only knows what he saw in Mary) is now presumably dead! Next season I gather that Edith will begin an affair with her married editor, and the flapper niece will create some excitement. And perhaps Daisy will go to live on a farm — which will mean she can look higher in life than to marry a footman. But my favorite character in the whole show is the Dowager, and I can only hope that Dame Maggie Smith will live forever.
I should mention that the script for the first season is now on sale, and the script for the second will go on sale next October — just in time for the fourth season. Savvy marketing on Fellowes’s part.
Laura K: Julian Fellowes–Smart man, you’d like him– not that I really know him, but I did get an interview with him (via telephone)
Me: I’ve begun the script books. They are revealing: he meant for the series to start with poor Daisy doing all those fireplaces, the lowest of the low, and says how when he grew up how luxurious was the sensation of having a silent person do that for you …
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