Downton Abbey: Discussion Thread

[Sylph]

Oh, well, we agree on much more than you care to admit.

I'm not really looking forward too much to the whole war & hospital thing, but I have faith.

You are right, Julian Fellowes is too crafty to be writing this juiciness filled with cliches without it all being deliberate and calculated. It's a sort of a 'soaped up' Gosford Park. Was Gosford for you a mainstream piece, even a little bit? I inferred that from you post. I don't really think so, I think it was niche-y, but I'm not saying that in a disparaging way. More like a kind of art-house film or something.

Do you have any other spoilers? Apparently, ITV is doing well with this new team, Norman and Crozier, so more dramas might be on their way.

[EricMontreal22]

Ha--you're right, I think we do agree on more than I implied above.

Gosford for me was a mainstream arthouse flick (is that me copping out? ). LOL if that makes sense. For an Altman film it was pretty mainstream I thought--and for various reasons got more of an audience than his work (later work especially) would get. Also making it a murder mystery, etc--but it definitelyw as not done in a conevntional way (I do remember one person I saw it with complaining about the Altman overlapping dialogue as he found it hard to follow). I was a big fan though--but only saw it the once when it came out to theatres, I should check it out again.

[Sylph]

That is exactly what it is: a mainstream art-house flick. I like that designation.

Do you know whether Evelyn Napier will be back?

[Sylph]

[EricMontreal22]

Anyone else watching the second season of the best primetime soap on tv right now?

[Cat]

YES.

Lieutenant Courtney. :( That blind boy was so impossibly beautiful. I can see why Thomas fell for him.

LOL at the Dowager Duchess calling Edith Toad of Toad Hall after she found out she was driving a tractor.

[EricMontreal22]

I forgot, you're in the UK right now, aren't you? It sounds like it's near impossible to escape Downton over there... I have a feeling after the editing of 20 minutes or so last season, PBS won't edit the American showing this Spring, but I'm not taking my chances--I'm pretty much up to date. I LOVED the Toad Hall reference, lol... (I actually thought at first it was anachronistic, as for some reason I always thought Wind in the Willows was from the 1930s--but of course Julian Fellowes would never allow that, and the book was actually written shortly after the turn of the century...)

[Cat]

Yep -- and its funny you should mention dating the Toad Hall reference because I wondered whether it was written in the 1920s. But of course Julian Fellowes would have looked it up. He was probably a Wind in the Willows fan when he was a boy. I remember having to read it in junior school here when I was little. It's practically a rite of passage for most little kids here (well, until some idiot government minister deems it non-PC or something).

The big question is.... will Fellowes have Matthew Crawley die in the Great War? Lord knows it's a risk as the actor has a lot of chemistry with Michelle Dockery.

[DRW50]

Is the US still cutting out those pesky British references so the stupid Americans won't get a headache?

[EricMontreal22]

Ha even more baffling was much of the editing on PBS was done to speed up elements--particularly in the last two episodes (which were combined into one). Really, the people who watch PBS, if anything, get off on all those elements, so it just bewilders me...

PBS won't be airing it until the Spring, so we'll see how they handle it. I suspect now that the show is a hit for them, and they have so few anymore, and they got some flack about the editing, they'll air it as is this time. (part of the issue last time was they aired it as 4 90 minute episodes, without commercials, whereas on ITV it was 7 episodes, with commercials, 5 of which fit into an hour time slot, and 2 into a 90 minute slot, so they did some minor re-ordering of scenes, etc, but also ended up cutting out stuff they justified as slowing down the story... Sigh).

[EricMontreal22]

I think most kids in Canada grew up with Wind in the Willows as well, I was a huge fan as a boy (they also aired the British stop motion cartoon series of it here).

Surely Matthew won't die--not when they've gone through such machinations to have him and Mary never be able to admit their love.

[Cat]

I really do love this show but -- it is racing along at break-neck speed. Four episodes in and we are already in 1918? Wow, that was a quick Great War. The War was this huge emotional and societal trauma which turned Britain away forever from its feudal, aristocratic past and brought the possibility of class revolution to the forefront. No way after WWI would the working man sign up as cannon fodder while his well-born "superiors" blithely sacrifice an entire generation for God, king and country. This is dramatic stuff that impacts on every aspect of Downton Abbey but it is so rushed that I am not really feeling the pathos.

Maybe Fellowes will surprise me with the final 4 episodes. Thank God for Dame Maggie Smith, eh.

[DRW50]

I think they assume that people watch the show for sleekness, glam, atmosphere, and don't want to deal with horrors. It's sort of a glossy postcard, nothing going on beyond the surface.

[EricMontreal22]

Carl, no offence, but you saying that makes me think you've not seen it, or at least not more than one episode. They actually have addressed the horrors of war--we finally saw a soft side of Thomas when he helped the blind soldier who didn't want to convalese (sp?) in a new place and so killed himself, etc. It actyually has some fairly brutal moments and a lot of (granted somewhat obvious if you've seen Upstairs Downstairs) stuff about the problems with class systems, etc People definitely are turned on by the "period film porn" (I mean that house alone), but it's very very smart writing (as much as Fellowes' smugness makes me hate to say that). And yes it does have full on soap moments (like this week's revelation that the maid who was [!@#$%^&*] the soldier while the home was used as a hospital, is pregnant...), but I admit I like that too, obviously.

Cat it has been kinda moving quickly--in some ways I mind, in others I don't. The war is still in full force though--apparently it's meant to play out the season (it seems like they're still in early Summer at latest, and the War ended--I think--in November, so I guess that could work). Remember there was a jump of a couple of years too, I believe, between the seasons. Anyway, maybe that means the final four episodes will slow the pace some.

There will be an X mas special (as the Brits love to do) set, apparently in 1919 for what it's worth. They definitely will have to restructure the show a lot for the next season--I can't see them coming up with as convenient an excuse as the War gave them for why everyone can still be so connected to Downton.

[DRW50]

I've seen a few episodes and they do address some things but it's all done in a Merchant Ivory way ('90s Merchant Ivory, anyway). I think that's part of the appeal.

I don't think a show like this would ever be at home talking about WWI. I don't know why these shows need to feign historical accuracy. I think they should just go off into their own universe.