They may live in a Britain that was far more Christian than it is today, but the Crawley family doesn’t do God. That is because, according to Downton Abbey’s historical adviser, television chiefs ordered producers to “leave religion out of it”, for fear of alienating viewers.
Alastair Bruce pointed out the Crawley family is never shown in the process of sitting down to dinner, with the action instead starting part-way through the meal. This, he said, was to avoid having to show the characters saying grace. “In essence, you hardly ever see a table that isn’t already sat at. We never see the beginning of a luncheon or a dinner, because no one was ever allowed to see a grace being said, and I would never allow them to sit down without having said grace,” said Bruce.
“I think that the view was that we’d leave religion out of it, and it would’ve taken extra time, too. I suggested a Latin grace, but they decided that was too far, and no one would’ve known what was going on.”
Bruce said he was even banned from featuring napkins folded in the shape of a bishop’s mitre, for fear of breaching the religious edict. “Everyone panics when you try to do anything religious on the telly,” he said. “I still wish we could’ve got some decent napkin folds.”
The lack of religious references in Downton has been a topic of debate in America, where the series, broadcast on the PBS channel, is wildly popular. The unease at featuring any religious reference even extended to the name of the show. Peter Fincham, ITV’s head of television, revealed earlier this year that the channel had considered a different name for the series, because of the word “abbey” in it. He said: “I can remember discussions that almost seem comical now: Would people think it would have nuns or monks in it and be a religious series? But we satisfied ourselves they wouldn’t and we did a bit of marketing around it.”
Bruce, who was speaking to mark the launch of the DVD of the final series of Downton, warned viewers that the Christmas special will have a twist in the tail. The feature-length edition will be the show’s last episode, and Bruce said: “It is going to end in a way that you might not expect. It will be both exciting and emotional and it will leave you thinking lots of things.”
The historical adviser said that his greatest challenge while filming the final series was to stop the cast from lapsing back into their modern manners. Singling out Matthew Goode, who plays Henry Talbot, Lady Mary’s husband, he said: “There’s always this thing with actors who come into the show, they want to be more as we are today, and it can be a struggle.”
