Blackmail, clandestine assignations and a footman with a shocking case of home-dyed hair — Downton Abbey is back to its best.
Last year’s series of the upstairs-downstairs drama became so overblown and melodramatic that it seemed on the verge of falling to pieces.
Anna Bates’s rape was an ugly and violent shock, shattering the pretence that Downton was family viewing.
What with Edith’s illegitimate baby, Rose’s inter-racial affair and a strong whiff of murder below-stairs, Downton was on the brink, as a new season began on ITV, of suffering the same fate as The Archers — burnt out by its own high-octane plot lines.
But the interwoven stories are under control again. We had just enough excitement: hints of scandal and skulduggery but nothing that would make the front pages, even in 1924.
The central storyline still belongs to widowed Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) as she edges towards the embrace of Tony Gillingham (Tom Cullen), a man so smooth you could see your reflection in him.
Tony was tempting Mary to join him for a week of hanky-panky in an anonymous hotel, with the promise of marriage later... but surely she’s too sensible for that. Isn’t she?
Unlike previous series, set years apart, this one began soon after we last saw the Crawley family. It was 1924, and with a socialist government in power for the first time, England’s green and pleasant fields were trembling to the echo of the marching workers. “I feel a shaking of the ground,” declared Carson, the butler.
The vibrations were unsettling the villagers: the parish council wanted Carson, and not his master, Lord Grantham, to head the war memorial committee.
Elsewhere, impoverished aristocrats could no longer afford to maintain their households: At Skelton Park, Mrs Hughes warned the kitchen staff, “they’re down to a butler, a cook, two maids and a cleaning woman who comes in from the village — and that’s the lot.”
But the real sign that the class system was collapsing came when racy Lady Anstruther, played by Anna Chancellor, invited herself to dinner and decided to use Jimmy the footman as a bedwarmer.
Her Ladyship made a sharp exit after being discovered in flagrante by the Earl (Hugh Bonneville) and she isn’t expected to be back — but fans of Twenties period drama will be delighted to know that Miss Chancellor is currently filming the BBC’s remake of Mapp And Lucia in the role of Lucia.
Meanwhile, Molesley was dyeing his hair a virulent shade of blue, Daisy was learning to do sums and the Dowager Countess (Maggie Smith) was exercising all her wiles to scupper the romance between Isobel Crawley and her grand admirer, Lord Merton. Dame Maggie was at her waspish best: “There’s nothing simpler than avoiding people you don’t like,” she told Isobel (Penelope Wilton). “Avoiding one’s friends, that’s the real test.”
Glaring errors
Writer Julian Fellowes had been polishing his epigrams, and the script sparkled in places. But Downton is as much beloved for its clangers as its cut diamonds, and there were a few glaring errors to spy out.
After the recent publicity shots of Lord Grantham and his younger daughter, Lady Edith, posing beside the drawing-room mantelpiece, with a plastic water bottle on display between the antique vases, you might almost wonder whether these mistakes are included on purpose. When devious head footman Thomas offered a cigarette to Jimmy in the servant’s hall, both were smoking filter-tips — despite the fact that these weren’t invented till 1927, and didn’t catch on in Britain till the mid-Fifties. And when Daisy was struggling with her arithmetic primer, she called herself “pig-ignorant”. That’s Forties slang, not Twenties. Bloopers like these won’t cost the show any viewers, of course. And now that Lord Fellowes has damped down the X-rated excesses of the previous series, Downton will win back many doubters. Has the Earl been taking his wife too much for granted? Does Lady Rose have her saucy eye on her cousin by marriage, the ex-chauffeur Branson?
And how much longer can the cat-like Thomas Barrow keep landing on his feet? He was on the verge of being dismissed again, before he rescued Lady Edith from a bedroom blaze. No one was hurt, but there were soot-smeared faces all round. One thing is sure: Downton will continue to be adored by millions, as long it offers moments of innocence, extravagance and sheer fun... such as Lady Mary’s swaggering entrance to the library to greet her papa.
With an imperious jut of her chin, she announced: “I’m going upstairs to take off my hat!”
Only in Downton...
Downton Abbey season five starts in the UAE on September 23 at 9pm on OSN.
