Downton
Abbey review: the glorious fantasy of Britain comes to an end
The posh period
drama had great performances and even the odd insight into British
life – and its final episode leaves a gaping hole in ITV’s Sunday
schedule
Richard Vine
Saturday 26 December 2015 00.01 GMT
They managed to
resist covering everything in snow until the very end, but Downton
Abbey’s final ever episode was very much a kitchen sink affair.
Julian Fellowes chucked in a wedding, a birth, new jobs and old
fights, and a spirited version of Auld Lang Syne to wrap it all up.
The big rivalry
between Michelle Dockery’s Lady Mary and Laura Carmichael’s Lady
Edith was resolved. Dinner at The Ritz helped. Lady Mary engineered a
sneaky date with Bertie (aka the 7th Marquess of Hexham), and soon
Lady Edith had fought off her destiny as the great spinster of
Downton and was instead making plans for a New Year’s wedding
(saves on decorations, plus it’s one less big party scene to film)
and life as a Marchioness.
“You’re such a
paradox: you make me miserable for years, then you give me my life
back,” said Edith to Mary, a line that no doubt echoes the
sentiments from many of Downton’s unwilling viewers in living rooms
across Britain. Lady Edith even found the courage to knock Bertie’s
mother off her moral high horse with a truth bomb: admitting that
ward Marigold is her illegitimate daughter.
Henry Talbot
(Matthew Goode, adding some last-minute class to proceedings) gazed
into the distance, smoking with all the existential angst of a man
about to enter a new year without much to do. Watching a pal die
while motor racing will do that to a chap. Tom came to the rescue
with a plan, and the ex-chauffeur and the ex-racing car driver teamed
up to become second-hand car salesmen – just what the village
needs!
Bates and Anna got
their happy ending: a New Year’s baby, with Lady Mary for once
helping Anna off with her shoes, and tucking her into bed – see
what they did there? Countess Violet (Maggie Smith) continued to be
the Downton character with the most uptown funk, stepping in to help
Isobel Crawley fend off Dickie Merton’s mean daughter-in-law (“If
reason fails, try force!”), and Lady Rose returned to up the
glamour factor (Lily James in a cameo presumably tucked in before her
starring role in BBC1’s lavish New Year’s Day production of War
And Peace).
Elsewhere, the
arrival of an electric hairdryer (whatever next!) prompted Daisy to
chop off her hair and join the bob squad, Mr Molesley accepted a job
as a teacher (but still squeezed back into his livery for New Year)
and Baxter freed herself from her criminal past by … doing nothing.
After all these
years, it’s still hard to nail down what Downton Abbey actually is.
UK critics might have been surprised to see it nominated again in
this year’s US Emmy awards for best drama – the only British
entry, alongside Game of Thrones, Orange Is the New Black and Mad
Men. But it’s been a proper international blockbuster, up there
with Doctor Who and Top Gear in terms of British TV with cut-through
appeal across the world.
At home, the show
has always played like a posh pantomime – a fantasy vision of a
Britain that never really existed, where everyone from kitchen maid
to second footman is happy with their lot because the people at the
top are such bally decent chaps. It’s also ended up being a place
where both the staff grinding away downstairs and the toffs in ball
gowns upstairs have been gifted with a peculiar sense of foresight, a
tangible sense of their place in history and how “things” will
never be the same again, once they’re off the screen.
It’s certainly the
purest Sunday night soap we’ve had for years; sometimes it’s been
an hour populated by 20-odd characters in search of a plot, and
sometimes it’s filled with great performances and insight into
class and position.
Downton
Abbey Christmas special finale, ITV, review: An unashamedly
sentimental send-off
'With any luck,
they’ll be happy enough, which is the English version of a happy
ending'
Sarah Hughes
After six series, 51
episodes and almost a decade’s worth of drama, misunderstandings
and withering putdowns, Downton Abbey came to an end with a
feature-length Christmas special containing a wedding, a pregnancy, a
birth, the prospect of new horizons and the changing of the old
guard.
As ever with Julian
Fellowes’ long-running tale of life above and below stairs the plot
wasn’t really the thing (although it was a pleasure to see
permanently thwarted valet Barrow finally given a reason to smile
after Lord Grantham named him butler on Carson’s enforced
retirement).
This was the
ultimate piece of Christmas television viewing, an unashamedly
sentimental send-off that saw wrongs righted, love conquer all and
even Lady Mary’s famous Freudian slip down a notch.
“We’re sisters
and sisters keep secrets,” she remarked of her fraught relationship
with Lady Edith, as close as long-term viewers will get to an
acknowledgement that she was in the wrong.
Yet even as we said
farewell to the assorted members of the Crawley clan, thoughts turned
to what ITV will do next. Fellowes’ comforting, conservative
confection became a global phenomenon, watched in 250 territories
worldwide and pulling in over 120 million viewers globally.
It was particularly
big news in America where ratings have continued to rise even as the
most devoted fans acknowledged that the writing had slipped.
It could also be
said to have single-handedly revived ITV’s fortunes – in 2010,
the year the series began, the channel trebled its annual profits
posting a pre-tax total of £312million up from £108 million the
previous year.
In March 2014 ITV
posted full-year pre-tax profits of £712 million. The pressure now
will be on to find a suitable replacement with the smart money on
Daisy Goodwin’s upcoming take on the early life of Queen Victoria
which features former Doctor Who star Jenna Coleman in the lead role.
Even with that
pedigree the new series will have some way to go to rival Downton’s
appeal.
As to why this
series hit the spot above all others pulling in millions of viewers
each week, the answer is simple: beneath the Big House trappings, the
elegant costumes and the tantalising peaks into how the other half
might once have lived, Downton Abbey was a soap opera.
You always knew how
each character would act and react and, like any good soap, the more
plots changed the more they stayed the same.
The 1900s might give
way to the roaring Twenties and the Crawleys strive to adapt with the
times but our enjoyment came from knowing that this was a show where
even the darkest moments came bathed in warm nostalgia for times long
past.
As the episode
finished Fellowes unashamedly made one last bid for our heartstrings
cuing up the familiar strains of Auld Lang Syne as snow fell thick
outside.
In truth Maggie
Smith’s Dowager Duchess of Grantham had delivered the best obituary
earlier when she remarked: “With any luck they’ll be happy
enough, which is the English version of a happy ending.” Few among
us could ask for more.
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