After all, what is Downton Abbey but a chance to see, as Lord Robert put it, “how the other half lives”? To admire, as Molesley put it, “fine craftsmanship and beautiful paintings”? And isn’t the flipside of that, as Lady Edith laments, that the Crawleys’ “way of life is something strange, something to queue up and buy a ticket to see, a museum exhibit, a fat lady in the circus”? (Sadly, the program has not yet delivered on Lord Robert’s idea of giving viewers their money’s worth by showing them “Lady Mary in the bath.” Hope springs eternal!) Or put more darkly, as Molesley does, don’t people “start asking, ‘Why have the Crawleys got all of this and I haven’t?’” Aren’t there plenty of critics echoing Mr. Carson’s dire warning of “a guillotine in Trafalgar Square,” but as a positive thing? These are all sentiments expressed about the potential motives for and results of the villagers’ visit, but they describe the range of reactions to the show just as accurately.
And as usual, Julian Fellowes is studiously agnostic as to which side has the right of it. Given his biography and the state of the world, neutrality isn’t really all that neutral. But I’ve always been uncomfortable with the idea that there’s something inherently immoral about the setup of the show. Everyone on it is so nice that much of the horror of the British class system is elided, but if you’re dim enough to watch this thing and think “those were the good old days,” that’s hardly Fellowes’s fault.
I reviewed last night’s very meta Downton Abbey for the New York Observer.
Tags: Downton Abbey, new york observer, reviews, TV, TV reviews