Downton
Abbey review – mostly harmless TV spin-off
3 / 5
stars3 out of 5 stars.
Familiar
comforts abound in a big screen outing for the Crawleys and staff
Simran Hans
@heavier_things
Sun 15 Sep
2019 05.30 BST
There is
something faintly Hogwartian about the opening scene of Downton Abbey, which
follows a hand-stamped letter’s journey via steam train from Buckingham Palace
to ITV’s most beloved Yorkshire manor. Movie spin-offs of TV shows are almost
never a good idea and this is no exception, the film’s narrative rhythm
structured in bite-size episodic beats.
The budget
seems bigger, the costumes flashier and the swooping overhead shots of the
Crawley mansion appropriately cinematic, but, truth be told, there’s little to
suggest that this has been designed for the big screen rather than as an
extended television special.
The hugely
popular series ran for six seasons from 2010 to 2015, offering an exportable
social history of Britain between 1912 and 1926. Those who followed will likely
enjoy being reunited with Maggie Smith’s withering asides, impish scullery maid
Daisy Mason’s (Sophie McShera) anodyne flirtations with a sexy plumber (James
Cartwright), and a juicy bone thrown in the direction of Robert James-Collier’s
gay footman Thomas Barrow. Those who didn’t will find it easy enough to keep up
with the plot, which centres on a visit from George V (Simon Jones) and Queen
Mary (Geraldine James).
Still, it’s
lighthearted stuff and mostly benign too, save its unashamedly effusive stance
on the monarchy.
Downton
Abbey, like plantation houses, delivers fantasy over brute reality
Michael
Henry Adams
The
American south may seem a long way from the estates of England, but in both
places a veil of caprice covers harsh truths
Sat 21 Sep
2019 06.00 BSTLast modified on Sat 21 Sep 2019 18.31 BST
The son of
a Scottish immigrant who worked as a servant, Donald Trump could hardly wait
for his banquet at Buckingham Palace. A seat next to Elizabeth II conferred a
sense of accomplishment little else could.
To many,
such behavior from an American president appeared downright unseemly. But how
could we scoff? How else have so many of us been eagerly awaiting the return of
Downton Abbey?
TV and film
can be transporting, giving us glimpses of lives we can only imagine
imperfectly. Decades before Julian Fellowes’ creation came forth to conquer
America, PBS offered a steady diet of British clotted cream. Royals,
aristocrats, castles, servants, sex. Such is the stuff of which Downton daydreams
are made.
We make our
own fantasies too. As a boy, watching Gone With the Wind, I saw plantation
houses for which I thought I could sell my soul. It seemed such an alluring way
of life.
No wonder
people complain of being lectured about slavery when they visit Savannah or
Charleston. They, like me, have imagined themselves in the master’s place. No
work to be done, fanned on white-pillared porches, sipping cooling drinks,
pondering pleasures to come. Is it surprising so many, confronted by the nightmare
behind the reverie, recoil in unacknowledged shame?
I came to
this crossroads early, no longer able to overlook the anguish of my ancestors.
I saw exquisite architecture and ideas of gracious hospitality but knew both to
be built on the worst criminality.
How alike our ruling classes are. How
nefarious the sources of their vast wealth, on which beautiful homes were built
Fortunately,
thanks to green England, I was able to transfer my affections. The Forsyte
Saga, Upstairs Downstairs, Brideshead Revisited, The Admirable Crichton. The
Shooting Party, The Remains of the Day, Gosford Park. They became my refuge and
taught me much. Entranced by an elegant aesthetic, reading countless books,
even attending the Attingham Summer School to study famous country houses, I
sought an elusive loveliness, untroubled by oppression.
At the very
lightest level, all this means I know that Downton – the whole phenomenon, the
TV series, the film, the traveling exhibition, the merchandising – is a
ludicrous and ahistorical fancy.
I know, for
example, that contrary to what we see on Fellowes’ screen, non-royal butlers
did not wear white waistcoats and that waiters did not wear dinner jackets at
all. I know ladies were never gloved while drinking or eating, candles were
never used on a luncheon table and candle shades, now found only in royal
residences, were in fact universal. For enthusiasts like me, it’s such
esoterica which makes Downton so enjoyable.
But as in
my love affair with the plantations of the American south, there was a
wriggling worm in the bud.
How alike
our ruling classes are. How nefarious the sources of their vast wealth, on
which such beautiful homes were built.
In the UK,
to take just one example, a house as sublime as Harewood, near Leeds, altered
by Robert Adam, was funded by the infamous triangular trade. Even English
currency came to be defined by slavery. With abolition by Britain in 1833 came
compensation to 46,000 slave owners for 800,000 liberated Africans, until the
banks were rescued in 2009 the largest government bailout in history.
There were
other sources of income. Indian opium, imposed on China. Farms in Ireland. The
wealth behind many of the estates of England was no less tainted than that
which built plantations in Virginia, Alabama and Georgia.
Fellowes
was careful to give his great house a more benign foundation. The Earl of
Grantham, we are told, derives his affluence straight from his Yorkshire
estates.
Hit hard by
agricultural depressions, he takes an option not available to his tenants: he
marries the daughter of an American millionaire. That said millionaire is an
untitled Jew, a dry goods merchant from Cincinnati, is among storylines meant
to show us what a good egg the earl really is, an unlikely egalitarian in
tweeds. But he’s an imprudent one too: by investing his wife’s millions in a
Canadian railway that goes bankrupt, Grantham places all his loved ones in peril.
Worse
occurred in real life, of course. Much worse. Take the brutal, polluting mills
and mines, like so many plantation fields, that often lay just outside the
gates.
Of course,
Downton isn’t real. So, to stay in the realm of art, consider Shipley, the
neo-Palladian masterpiece DH Lawrence invented for Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
There, Squire Leslie Winter talks of the miners who work his pits with all the
condescension a planter might have for his slaves.
Chatting
with the Prince of Wales, Winter quips: “The miners are perhaps not so
ornamental as deer, but they are far more profitable.”
We are the heirs to those who did all the
work, those who built the Downtons and the plantations
HRH
replies: “If there were coal under Sandringham, I would open a mine on the
lawns and think it first-rate landscape gardening. Oh, I am quite willing to
exchange roe-deer for colliers, at the price.”
In the real
world, many fine homes have been lost. Their deaths, like their lives, are all
about the money.
In
Lawrence’s book, the squire dies and his heirs tear down his hall to build
semi-detached “villas” for workers. Lady Chatterley is shocked to learn such
people are as capable of love as she is. One suspects Fellowes, the author of a
novel called Snobs, no less, might feel a similar shock if told us ordinary
people who love Downton, his facile but beautiful and seductive creation, are
capable of sincere feeling too.
We are. And
while we are equipped to daydream of such luxury for ourselves, or to pick nits
with Fellowes’ staging while we swoon at his stars in their gorgeous firmament,
we are also the heirs to those who did all the work, those who built the
Downtons and the plantations.
We know a
profound truth behind all their costly beauty and misery. Every stately home,
in every land, belongs to us too.
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