Laura Carmichael as Lady Edith Crawley on 'Downton Abbey'
It's 1924 and the
first Labour government in the history of the United Kingdom has come to power. Modernity is changing British peerage as the servants of lords and barons become factory workers and develop a new middle class. And as this unfolds, an aristocratic family navigates the changes, while still trying to hold to the appearance and vestiges of their nobility in a post-Edwardian world.
As Downton Abbey entered its fifth season last night with its American premiere, the show is trying to regain its footing after a fourth season that was seen by many critics and fans as being an uneven mess. Even still, the drama is the most popular series in the history of PBS, and in these new episodes there's a bit of a shift away from big melodrama to angst and uncertainty rooted in the class distinctions of the characters. And one of the most interesting and effective aspects of Julian Fellowes' creation is that the world it depicts is a period-drama fantasy massively out of step with modern life, while also being very relevant to the inequalities of the present-day.
What's the verdict so far for the latest outings with the Crawley family and everyone who surrounds them? Follow beneath the fold for more ....
When I was a kid, my mother and I would watch Dallas together. I think my mother's reaction to Dallas was indicative of why it was such a hit. She loved to hate Larry Hagman's J.R. Ewing, while loving the soap opera twists and turns of the story. Even with its prestige actors and accurate period dress, Downton Abbey, at its core, is as much a soap opera as Dallas was. I don't think there's any chance Downton Abbey would ever write off an entire season as a dream, but we do have the classic tropes of amnesia, murder mysteries, and pig pens. And both series share some similar themes beyond rich people in glamorous clothing (i.e., the problems of a wealthy family empire, attempts to pass along a name and lineage, big estates like Southfork Ranch and Downton Abbey, etc.).
There's nothing wrong with being a soap opera, since some of the best television series in the history of the medium are soap operas. However, when Downton Abbey is bad, the story veers into Melrose Place bad. The plot becomes histrionic and goes for shocks and twists over natural progression. The worst storyline of season four was the rape of Anna Bates (Joanne Froggatt), since it played like a desperate attempt to have something big happen instead of a well-thought-out development. As the fifth season begins, the series finds its bearings by not swinging for the fences and going for monumental events. Instead, what the audience witnesses are portents and signs for a future that's coming.
From Emily L. Stephens at the
A.V. Club:
Robert Crawley (Hugh Bonneville), the Earl of Grantham, disapproves of the future, which means he disapproves of the present. His authority is shrinking, too, chipped away bit by bit. He deplores a government he believes is “committed to the destruction of people like us and everything we stand for.” His daughter owns half of his estate. His radical son-in-law, manager of the estate, shares many of her views. His own grandchildren strip him of his dwindling dignity with the pet name Donk, taken from a game of pin the tail on the donkey. He even resents Lady Rose’s patronage of the local school, remarking, “I thought they might have asked me.”
That’s the heart of the Earl’s crumbling sense of position: “I thought they might have asked me.” When a village delegation seeks conference with him to plan a war memorial, Lord Grantham assumes he’ll be pressed into service as head of the committee despite his own (very proper) instinct to the contrary. He’d be happy, even relieved, to be passed over for another man of rank who “did his bit” in the war, but when the committee honors Carson with their request, he’s visibly shaken.
- Decisions made in secret: Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) is trying to move on from widowhood, and is still unsure of whether to go with guy No. 1 or guy No. 2. Tony Gillingham (Tom Cullen) suggests what any guy in the position of possibly having sex with a beautiful woman might do: let's go find out how sexually compatible we are by taking a "test drive" before jumping into marriage. It's something that Mary seems to be giving due consideration. At the same time, Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael) is still trying to deal with the repercussions of little Marigold, crying herself to sleep as she thinks about her child living on the estate with farmers. These are women struggling with trying to balance the position they have, the social expectations of that position, and how that conflicts with their own desires for happiness. And with Edith, it's something that cannot stay hidden forever, and contributed to almost burning down a castle.
"The villagers wanted Carson."—Lord Grantham
"Your father always told the village what they wanted."—Dowager Countess
- The times they are a’changin: Tom Branson (Allen Leech), the Irish chauffeur who married the late Lady Sybil and now plays an important role in running Downton, has found a crush with a sassy socialist schoolteacher, Sarah Bunting (Daisy Lewis). But she irritates the Crawley family by making it clear that she's pro-worker and anti-elitist. And there are indications of upheaval upstairs and downstairs. Daisy (Sophie McShera) wants to learn finance and math to expand her opportunities.
"I feel a shaking of the ground I stand on, that everything I believe in will be tested and held up for ridicule over the next few years."—Mr. Carson
- Jewel Thievery: If you were wondering what Thomas Barrow (Rob James-Collier) had on Miss Baxter (Raquel Cassidy) in Season Four that made her so afraid of him, it was that Baxter had spent time in jail for stealing from a previous employer. However, so far, Cora (Elizabeth McGovern) doesn't seem fazed by the information, since she was appalled by the way Thomas tried to use her past to blackmail her. Although, since the last maid sorta caused Lady Cora to have a miscarriage, jewel theivery might be small potatoes in comparison.
From Jen Chaney at Vulture:
Does Baxter know for a fact that Bates killed Lord Gillingham’s valet? Will Barrow be able to extract that information from her? Why the hell is Thomas still so fixated on Bates since it just seems kind of ridiculous? Oh, and also: for the love of Isis’s adorable opening titles dog butt, ARE WE STILL TALKING ABOUT LORD GILLINGHAM’S DAMNED VALET?? I honestly thought we could leave all that behind, but apparently it is not possible for any season of Downton Abbey to exist without a cloud of suspicion hovering over Mr. Bates the way a swirl of cartoon dirt constantly hangs around Pigpen in Peanuts.
Maggie Smith as Violet Crawley
- The Dowager Countess is not the millionaire matchmaker: Poor Isobel (Penelope Wilton) is first manipulated toward a hook-up with Lord Merton. However, any such union could potentially put Isobel on the same level as the Dowager Countess, and she can't have a sense of superiority over someone in the same social plane. Violet uses a luncheon to redirect Dickie Merton’s towards another woman, one Lady Shackleton.
- What to expect this season: Other major storylines in Season Five will involve the Dowager Countess meeting a Russian prince from her past, and an art expert (Richard E. Grant) who comes to Downton to see a Piero della Francesa painting and ends up wooing Cora. Cousin Rose (Lily James) also finds someone, although her object of affection is potentially unsuitable. Finally, Bates and Anna get legal trouble and more angst.
- A glamorized past?: I mentioned the similarities to Dallas, but one big difference between Dallas and Downton Abbey is that unlike the Ewings, the Crawleys are more or less decent people who're fair to the people who serve them. One of the biggest criticisms of Downton Abbey is that it's an apologia for aristocracy, where the estate owners are benevolent rulers and the servants are not only mostly content with their lot in life, they are some of the biggest defenders of the class system. It probably doesn't help that creator Julian Fellowes is a Tory member of the House of Lords. And some have argued the series is the British equivalent of presenting a romanticized version of the antebellum American South (e.g., Gone with the Wind).
From Polly Toynbee in The Guardian:
To control history by rewriting the past subtly influences present attitudes too: every dictator knows that. Downton rewrites class division, rendering it anodyne, civilised and quaintly cosy. Those upstairs do nothing unspeakably horrible to their servants, while those downstairs are remarkably content with their lot. The brutality of servants’ lives is bleached out, the brutishness of upper-class attitudes, manners and behaviour to their servants ironed away. There are token glimpses of resentments between the classes, but the main characters are nice, in a nice world. The truth would be impossible without turning the Earl of Grantham and his family, the Crawleys, into villains, with the below-stairs denizens their wretched victims – a very different story, and not one Julian Fellowes would ever write.