Downton Abbey (Season 1)

Starring: Hugh Bonneville, Jessica Brown Findlay, Laura Carmichael, Jim Carter, Brendan Coyle, Michelle Dockery, Siobhan Finneran, Joanne Froggatt, Thomas Howes, Rob James-Collier, Rose Leslie, Phyllis Logan, Elizabeth McGovern, Sophie McShera, Lesley Nicol, Maggie Smith, Dan Stevens, Penelope Wilton

Creator: Julian Fellowes
Genre: Period Drama
Rating: A+

I absolutely loved this show. I think a big part of the success of a show like this is that it combines traits of both a miniseries and a longer one; seasons are individually very short, but plots carry on and not everything is resolved at the conclusion of a season. The other thing that I love is that it feels like it has a huge budget without being overly flashy and really takes you out of the real world and into the world of the show. The other thing that I really enjoy is the fact that the show moves quickly, with the first season covering from the sinking of the Titanic (April 15, 1912) to Britain’s declaration of war on Germany (August 4, 1914). This allows for plots to move along and eliminates things like the annual Christmas special.

Downton Abbey opens with the telegram announcing the sinking of the Titanic being received, as well as the news that the two heir presumptive of The Right Honourable Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham (Bonneville) were on the ship and are presumed to be dead. This sends the family into a succession crisis; only the closest male relative can inherit the Duke’s title, and with it the Downton estate and the personal fortune of his wife, The Right Honourable Cora Carley, Countess of Grantham (McGovern), which have both been tied to the title. The first season of Downton shows the family trying to deal with this succession crisis and the many ways of getting around it – notably the suggestion that eldest daughter, Lady Mary Crawley (Dockery), marry the new heir, Mr. Matthew Crawley (Stevens), her third cousin once removed, who moves to Downton with his mother, Mrs. Isobel Crawley (Wilton). Prior to the crisis and his untimely death, Mary had been engaged to the previous heir’s eldest son, Patrick, her first cousin once removed. Matthew, however, is not the typical heir presumptive – he’s the son of a doctor, works as a lawyer himself, and definitely doesn’t have any of the beliefs that one typically associates with the British aristocracy. Mary is not the only Crawley daughter; there’s also Lady Edith Crawley (Carmichael), the over-looked middle child who is often in competition with her elder sister, and Lady Sybil Crawley (Brown Findlay), the youngest and radical of the family. The show is about more than just the Crawley’s, however, as it also explores the lives of their servants. There’s butler Charles Carson (Carter), the head of the household staff; housekeeper Hughes (Logan); John Bates (Coyle), the Duke’s new valet; Sarah O’Brien (Finneran), the Countess’ maid; footmen Thomas Barrow (James-Collier) and William Mason (Howes); maids Anna Smith (Froggatt) and Gwen Dawson (Leslie); and kitchen maid Daisy Robinson (McShera) and cook Beryl Patmore (Nicol). Oh! And watching over, and manipulating, it all is The Right Honourable Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham.

Where to start… Dame Maggie Smith is awesome. There are a lot of characters in this show who, while not exactly modern in their thinking, are definitely progressive. It’s easy to like characters like the Duke or Matthew who are genuinely nice people and aren’t overly old fashioned. It’s much harder to like a character who is so old fashioned that she is surprised at the invention of a swivel chair – which she likes no more than the idea of women’s suffrage. Yet there’s something about the way that Smith delivers her lines that just makes her so easy to love. The world that the Dowager Countess was born and raised into is on the cusp of completely changing, and she’s so old fashioned that even her style of dress is outdated – something which the average person wouldn’t notice, given as it’s a costume drama set a hundred years ago, but also shows the attention to detail that the creators and costume designers have paid.

If you look beyond just the Dowager Countess, the acting still remains stellar. The characters that are intended to be loveable come off that way, the villains are villainous, and the characters who are in between remain in between. They’ve really thought out each of these characters and the cast seem to really know them. Beyond just the actual acting are the costumes, which are amazingly crafted. It can be a bit hard to notice, given as the majority of the cast are playing servants who wear, primarily, a uniform, but the clothes that the Crawley’s wear, especially when it comes to the younger girls. We can even expand this sheer awesomeness into the actual casting and the makeup that they use on the cast; none of them looks like you would expect TV stars to look like, they all look like they belong in the early twentieth century. The servants all have their looks very subtly downplayed (the exception being O’Brien, whose looks are downplayed but not at all subtly) to make them appear rather homely, while the Crawley women have similarly downplayed appearances and subtle makeup, but in a manner that still has them looking elegant and beautiful. Beyond them there’s Downton itself, which is this beautifully crafted English castle. I’m not sure how much of the set is an actual castle that they’ve filmed in and how much of it is your typical made-for-TV sets, but it all looks like it goes together and it’s all beautiful. I am of the opinion that all TV shows and movies should feature English castles. They just add so much simply by existing.

The one downside of the series is that the story is a bit complex, especially given how quickly things move. I actually had to look up an entail in order to figure out just what that was – it’s explained, very slowly and with minimal detail in the course of the show, but it’s a major plot point. I love how much they’re incorporating the real world into the series, but I do think that they could explain some of the details a little bit more – especially when said details don’t really exist within current, everyday life. When you watch a fantasy you expect to have the world explained to you; when I watch a period drama I expect to have some of the era explained to me.