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Downton Abbey
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Message 1.Β
Posted by jane (U14068200) on Monday, 10th October 2011
Hi there. Did anyone see Downton Abbey last night. Just wondered how on earth the Captain and his man escaped being shot captured or even vaguley injured when they ended up in an enemy trap and how on earth would the enemy not have been aware of them when they were so close to them? Am i wrong?
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Message 2
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Monday, 10th October 2011
It's glossy, addictive tripe, isn't it - just like The Tudors? Julian Fellowes must be laughing all the way to the bank. Yet Downton Abbey - they say - is "the most critically acclaimed series since Brideshead Revisited". Ye gods, I'm tasting real despair at last - or simply growing old.
Is it just me, but does anyone else find the Dowager Countess not quite the thing? Maggie Smith is a great actress, but I'm sure her countess is no great lady - all that grimacing and gossiping. Very lower-middle. I suspect Maggie's character is not top drawer at all; she probably snared the late Earl during her music hall days (a bit like Judi Dench's Lady Bracknell in a recent film version of The Importance of Being Earnest). Perhaps the dreadful truth will out near the end of the series. -
Message 3
Posted by jane (U14068200) on Monday, 10th October 2011
The Captain seems to having an awful lot of Leave! Was it really like that?Im sure Lavinia will be delighted when he turns up in London. Actually i love it all but im not sure of its historical accuracy! Also the adverts are driving me mad...
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Message 4
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 10th October 2011
Well I do not think that you can totally blame Julian Fellowes for the way that the war scenes were shot.. For indeed it did look impossible for them to have got away.
But there must indeed have been many such incidents in No Man's Land when people were out scouting.
Moreover we have now become so accustomed to think of war as an exercise in mass extermination that we have forgotten what war was truly like..
A soldier is not just a mass-murderer, and recently I was quoting Steinbeck's introduction to the book edition of the pieces written as a war-correspondent in 1943.
It was published in 1958, and Steinbeck wrote that he could hardly associate with what he described anymore- because it came just before the "little spitting experimental atom bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki". He later wrote in personal letters that he thought that the only really unique thing that Western Civilization had contributed to world history was a sense of "gallantry".. This he had seen in the Italian campaigns in 1943. But by 1958 what he wrote then seemed like the stuff of myth and legend. Like the world of Downton Abbey when people still had faith in Humanity.
As Steinbeck wrote in the Sixties on the assassination of Kennedy the modern age was a muddied age of confusion, cynicism and pessimism, and it is very easy to dismiss the idea that people ever believed in the potential greatness of conduct that every person could/ should aspire to measuring themselves against.
But, even in the Second World War there was a repeat of that incident in the Eighteenth Century when two armies met by accident and just parted in opposite directions. The Eighteenth Century incident at least had the officers offer to let the other side open fire if they wished. "No! After you". Neither would fire first- not least perhaps because that would have left them badly exposed at such close quarters.
In the 2WW it was a British unit and a German unit in the Desert War which discovered that- having been lost in a sandstorm- they had made camp on either side of a sand dune.. The officers agreed to just part in diametrically opposite directions, since neither side had any instructions to do battle.
And in the First World War- though the snipers were real enough- so were the days after an offensive like the Somme when the stretcher and first aid parties were able to go all the way across No Man's Land with impunity, and even into the German trenchhes.
In the TV documentary "A Game of Ghosts" about the Somme- one veteran recalls the day after the first great offensive. The Germans called him from their trenches "Tommy here".. And led him to where a British soldier was lying very badly injured with much of his innards hanging out. The Brit complained that he had not been able to communicate with the Germans and had asked to see an officer, but this was probably a forward unit not very well supplied.
The veteran described how he tried to patch up the injured man and get him back to the British lines, for the Germans were anxious that he should not stay there too long. But he had to keep stopping because the man was in agony.. In the end the injured man said that he just could not make it..and the veteran had been haunted by having to leave him for more than half a century, until he visited a war memorial and saw his name there.
I always wonder whether he regretted not being armed on that duty. A bullet in the head. Or whether he "finished him off" with his knife. That sometimes is a "duty of care".
As for leave, there was a very clear rota for front line duty just a few weeks at a time.. And even back in the trenches there was a progression through the different trenches up to the actual "firing trench" where you were really in the action.
Books like "The War The Infantry Knew 1914-1919" by Captian J.C. Dunn bring out the life away from the front too, with men getting on with growng things in allotments and running all kinds of activities. Horse racing and betting there upon was very popular- with some horses and their achievements being celebrated along the Front.
Officers had the means and also often the wider responsbilities that would have meant coming back to England- not least to report back.. Field telephones were developing and other telephones existed too. But I think that communication was still most effective face to face.
But I think that "time" Downton Abbey is not always brought out. If I remember correctly the first series started with the news of the Titanic and ended with the outbreak of war. This series is already well into the First World War. Conscription has already been going on for some time.
Cass -
Message 5
Posted by MB (U177470) on Monday, 10th October 2011
It's glossy, addictive tripe, isn't it - just like The Tudors? Julian Fellowes must be laughing all the way to the bank. Yet Downton Abbey - they say - is "the most critically acclaimed series since Brideshead Revisited". Ye gods, I'm tasting real despair at last - or simply growing old.Β
Should that not have been "the most critically acclaimed ITV series"? Though not a very high standard to beat.
I seem to remember reading that the old ITV series like Brideshead got a lot of critical acclaim and most people claimed to have watched them but the actual audience figures were not very high. -
Message 6
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 10th October 2011
But Brideshead I believe was based upon an Evelyn Waugh novel from an age of "Decline and Fall" that was created and/or ushered in by the First World War which left "Western Civilization" at best in convalescence and post-traumatic stress-disorder.
One is reminded of that opening scene of "Gandhi". Now we see those " future generations" imagined in 1948 who can scarcely credit the moral codes and standards of previous ages
Cass -
Message 7
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 10th October 2011
Temperance
Re your comments about the Maggie Smith character-- Is it not generally accepted that the Edwardian period saw a relaxing of Victorian standards with Edward himself living more like a simple country gentleman than the son of Prince Albert that his mother had always made him realise that he could never be..
But I think that Julian Fellowes has established his own creation. Was he not involved in writing as well as acting in "Monarch of the Glen" and I think that he was involved in a very successful big-screen country house drama. Name escapes me.
Cass -
Message 8
Posted by Anglo-Norman (U1965016) on Monday, 10th October 2011
I think that he was involved in a very successful big-screen country house drama. Name escapes me. Β
'Gosford Park'.
I wonder if he's of the same Fellowes family who's eldest daughters have the hereditary right to be the Royal Herb Strewer (should the Queen feel inclined to appoint one - no monarch has since Victoria, IIRC). He is minor aristocracy, so it seems reasonable. -
Message 9
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 10th October 2011
Anglo-Norman
That's the one I was thinking of..
And as you say he does seem to have some "insider" background and actually does seem to do some historical research for his "flights of fancy".. Moreover after all everyone hoping to do things for the market knows that "the customer is always right"..
Was it her friend and intimate Vita Sackville West that Virginia Woolf admired so much because she accepted that it was her job to earn the money so that her sons by Harold Nicholson should have an education appropriate to "the Sackville line"- and just produced a commercially successful book at the rate of one per year, while the boys were at boarding school?
Cass -
Message 10
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Monday, 10th October 2011
Royal Herb Strewer Β
What a great job!
"Gosford Park" was really good - much better than "Downton Abbey". I seem to remember Stephen Fry - hamming it up as the Detective? - was badly miscast though.
Fellowes *is* proper posh - I always get him mixed up with Gyles Brandreth - both upper-class English eccentrics, but very clever. And they're both making a fortune flogging "being posh" to the hoi polloi. I'm sure they and their mates all rock with laughter at us and our gullibility. -
Message 11
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 10th October 2011
Temperance
I would suggest no more than anyone else making a fortune out of exploiting the emotional desert of modern living .. and less nasty than Linda la Plante and other people who titivate audiences with sado-masochistic sex and murder.
And at least the thought of people with the power and the judgement to do good things is preferable to the defeatism of just learning to live with and accommodate bad.
Cass -
Message 12
Posted by Silver Jenny (U12795676) on Tuesday, 11th October 2011
I may be gullible, Temperance but I get the feeling that Fellowes enjoys his work and doesn't mock his audiences. His scenes in the last series when the cook thought she was going blind were sympathetically written, I thought ,so he has insight into life below stairs. .
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Message 13
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Tuesday, 11th October 2011
I may be gullible, Temperance but I get the feeling that Fellowes enjoys his work and doesn't mock his audiences. His scenes in the last series when the cook thought she was going blind were sympathetically written, I thought ,so he has insight into life below stairs. . Β
Well, if you are gullible, I am too, Silver Jenny. I'm there every Sunday at 9.00pm with my glass of wine and my peanuts. I watched every episode of The Tudors too.
Bit it's the triumph of hope over experience, I'm afraid - these new series just don't compare with productions such as "Brideshead", "I, Claudius", "Elizabeth R" and "The Six Wives". But is that simply that I'm growing old? Maybe. But even the scripts of the old "Upstairs, Downstairs" ( I've just remembered Mrs. Bridges' Jam - I wonder if they'll soon be producing Downton Abbey Originals to compete with Prince Charles's jams and biscuits?) seemed to have more meat to them. Oh well.
I don't like Julian Fellowes and his ilk, I'm afraid, but I'd be the first to admit that I'm sadly prejudiced. I'm sure he's a very nice man really. Odd he wants his wife to become Countess Kitchener of Khartoum though - sounds like a name for a poster around here!
A. N. Wilson described "Downton Abbey" recently as a load of b*l**cks (on Radio 4). He immediately apologised for swearing, but I think the man could have a point. Was life "downstairs" really as we are being shown in the programme, Silver Jenny? Honestly, I doubt it. Fellowes is surely giving us - the masses - what we what fondly *imagine* such a life to have been like. Would the cook with the eyesight problem really have been so sympathetically treated and cared for? In some of the great houses, maybe, but not in most? I agree that no one wants gritty Marxist realism on a Sunday night (or any night for that matter), but something a little more realistic, please!
Interesting article here from Wilson - alas, from the "Daily Mail":
It should be noted that the first reader response calls Wilson "a pompous git".
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Message 14
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 11th October 2011
I have only had one experience of upstairs and downstairs life.. As a student back in the Sixties I went to stay with a friend from uni.. At one moment I wandered into the kitchen, and was later told by my friend and her parent that it was the domain of D*** . Anyone wanting anything had to ask D****.
I subsequently learned that D*** had been my friend's mother's nanny and had been in the family all her life. When the mother married and had my friend she came to live with the couple, until my friend's father died when she was about two. D**** stayed with the family through another brief marriage cut short by death, and on her retirement they bought her a little cottage not too far away, where my friend continued to visit her through her old age.
I have no doubt that not all situations were like this- but this one was full of affection and mutual care.
Cass -
Message 15
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Tuesday, 11th October 2011
There was a great difference in conditions for those in service in the houses of the wealthy where there usually sufficient staff to cope with the demands and for those who were the lone servants in the households of middle class families with pretensions. Often they were miserably over worked and under paid and could be subject to the whims of an unrealistic mistress.
Even worse than cap and apron service was farm service which was often unalloyed hell. I knew a woman who had been sent to a farm and she told of having to hack up frozen turnips (swedes) outdoors in midwinter for the cattle and when she, inevitably, cut her hand to the bone was taken to a byre and told to take down a spider's web to bind it up. This was not long before the first World War.
On the other hand I had a great aunt who was a dresser to Queen Mary and then ladies maid and companion to a aristocratic woman. She travelled the world, lived in comfort and was possibly the most snobbish person I ever met! -
Message 16
Posted by jane (U14068200) on Tuesday, 11th October 2011
The subject matter is very interesting to me because i have ancestor, born to Austrian/Swiss parents who becamea Lady in Waiting to queen Charlotte and i often wonder about her life. Would she have been below stairs? Dowton Abbey has certainly sparked my curiosity about life below stairs, but it also shows the Earl and his wife to be largely sympathetic and caring, and the rest of the family at least interested in the servants lives if only on the surface!
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Message 17
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 11th October 2011
In general terms William Cobbett noted an important change in the early nineteenth century when the agricultural depression after the Napoleonic War destroyed many older landowning families.. One might say the world of Jane Austen was destroyed.
Cobbett was particularly incensed at the number of people who had made fortunes during the war , especially the "jobbers" who did it through the finance industry.. To Cobbett's mind they bought into prestige and status- without accepting the ties of big houses to the local community. They had "earned their money" and were entitled to whatever it could buy.
Certainly Beatrice Webb records her very long journey from her Unitarian business background in which her mother always delegated the handling of the domestic staff to her daughters as essential training, and taught too that it did staff no favours to be paid and treated any better than the market. In fact it seems to have been a disagreement with Joseph Chamberlain in Government, who was in favour of trying to give extra help to exploited girl workers that persuaded Chamberlain that the then Miss Potter was not the second wife he had been looking for to be step-mother to his daughters.
By the Edwardian times, however, there was renewed agricultural depression and Britain was struggling economically to keep up with Germany and the USA.. Generally there was much more sympathy for people in "Hard Times", and King Edward VII set the example of always asking his staff politely to do the jobs that they were there to perform, and to say thankyou. But the People's Budget had introduced Death Duties and, in its passing, the House of Lords had been pushed into a subordinate role compared to the Commons.
Downton Abbey has been fortunate in its Lord's success in marrying a wealthy American heiress.
But employing domestic staff went all the way down to the Lower Middle Class and life in the single-domestic staff situations was surely often lonely..
But then..Beatrice Webb later discovered- and did important work on - the prevalence of incest in the poorest families where it could be eight to a bed or more. Flora Thompson, who has come up recently, records how pleased she was as a teenager to get away from the crowded cottage in Lark Rise and go to live-in at the Post-Office at Candleford. Sometimes a little space to call your own in an attic was some kind of Heaven..
And "Domestic Industry" did have its own kind of career stucture- as came out in this weeks episode.
It is not fashionable to say so- but having taught so many children squashed together in soulless and spiritless housing estates, where the "ladder of opportunity" seems very remote- and generation after generation seem to be destined to dead end jobs and "rat race" lives- I am not sure that having taxed away the wealth that would have maintained the Domestic Industry and handed it in cash and kind to keep people unemployed and effectively locked out of Society in such places has been more than a sop to guilty consciences of people like the Webbs.
What it has done is destroyed the kind of houses where highly skilled craftsmen- like many carpenters that I have met in South London since the late Sixties- would have continued to produce world class quality goods.
Cass -
Message 18
Posted by Simon de Montfort (U14278627) on Tuesday, 11th October 2011
Strange thing about the location of Downton Abbey is that it is set somewhere very close to the location of the real Brideshead i..e. Castle Howard in Yorkshire.
One of the maids took a bus ride form Downton last week to the Red Lion at Kirkbymoorside which is just up the road from Castle Howard.
Yes, I do know that Downton is really Highclere Castle down on the Berks / Hants border. -
Message 19
Posted by MB (U177470) on Tuesday, 11th October 2011
Strange thing about the location of Downton Abbey is that it is set somewhere very close to the location of the real Brideshead i..e. Castle Howard in Yorkshire.
One of the maids took a bus ride form Downton last week to the Red Lion at Kirkbymoorside which is just up the road from Castle Howard.
Yes, I do know that Downton is really Highclere Castle down on the Berks / Hants border.Β
I hadn't realised that KMS was so near Castle Howard! I think I have stayed in the Red Lion, nice old Inn. -
Message 20
Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Tuesday, 11th October 2011
Your ancestress would not have been 'below stairs', Jane. A queen's Ladies-in-waiting were from the ranks of the nobility themselves because they were her companions.
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Message 21
Posted by Silver Jenny (U12795676) on Tuesday, 11th October 2011
temperance, do you thnk it might be the American influence of her Ladyship or is His Lordship a particularly nice man. It might have happened because good cooks were sought after rather than first and foremost a kindness to a frightened employee. Certainly the snobbishness of below staff is known about & anyone who was unlucky to be a tweenie must have had a life of utter misery. And imagine day after day listening to someone like O'brien with a spiteful tongue at every meal time.
And I will keep watching on Sunday evenings too, likewise though not with peanuts.
Incidentally the house and church they use for Matthew's mother and for the soup kitchen are in Bampton in Oxfordshire. -
Message 22
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 11th October 2011
Of course there were people who could definitely make other people's life a misery..
In part much of the dynamic of Female Emancipation came from privileged young ladies of leisure who did not regard it as such a privilege as being able to work at something.. though not the Garrett girls- Millicent Garrett Fawcett and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, who got full support and encouragement from their father.. And Grandfather Garrett was very much to the fore in forcing the official at Cambridge to give out the information that his grand-daughter Phillippa Fawcett had achieved a mark above that of the Senior Wrangler in the Cambridge Tripos Examinations- though, of course, she could not get an actual degree.
Last night I started reading a book about Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning..Her family had emigrated to the West Indies in the Seventeenth Century- and they still had plantations at Cinnamon Hill in Jamaica. But her father had established a large country estate at Hope Hill in the West Midland until financial disaster forced him to sell up and move to a London house. He was a tyrannical father to his 11 (?) children none of whom would ever be allowed to marry with his consent, and if they married without it were considered "dead to him".
Though Elizabeth did have genuine medical problems it does seem likely that the oppressive weight of her father's authority - (her mother died when she was c20) - contributed to her living rather like an invalid.. He seems to have accepted that he could not be quite as overbearing with her as he was with her sibblings.
Cass -
Message 23
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 11th October 2011
Following ferval's point I wondered recently whether the link that Temperance was after between Thomas Becket and Thomas More was that they had both served as pages in the houses of Archbishops..
For many centuries the sons of such families were sent away to serve in the great homes of England, to understand what such service meant - both above and below stairs- and to observe the "ways of the world" and to make good contacts.
It seems to have died out as book and playing field education took the place of such work experience; and generally the boarding schools were selective of intake- and the "useful contacts" were of the "old school tie" variety- which left both the opposite sex and the lower classes as largely unknown elements.
In the case of the Lord of Downton, for those who have not watched from the start.. his relationship with Mr. Bates goes back to war time experience.. Perhaps the Boer War.. That was also an education.
Cass -
Message 24
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Wednesday, 12th October 2011
Hi Silver Jenny,
Hugh Bonneville's character is pleasing, isn't it? He's a good man. He reminds me of Richard Bellamy from "Upstairs, Downstairs" - that kindly, educated, cultured sort you can't help warming too, even though they are alarmingly and incredibly "posh"! Richard Bellamy's character was more interesting though: he was not a real aristocrat at all, but had been born into the dreaded middle classes*. Bellamy's father had been a struggling country parson and his son, brilliant but poor, had won a scholarship to Cambridge. He later met and married an Earl's daughter, Lady Marjorie, and was made for life! (But it was a genuine love match, and he seems to have been accepted by her family and their friends.)
It's very true that some of the "downstairs" lot could be malicious bullies - and dreadful snobs too! Blackmail certainly existed, and viciously inclined servants could make the lives of (vulnerable) folk upstairs a misery. I emember being struck by this from Daphne du Maurier's "Rebecca" - her shy, little heroine, the new Mrs de Winter, who is a lovely girl with natural good breeding, but who, as she herself readily admits, does not belong in the Downton Abbey-like world of Manderley, is completely overawed by the horrible (and very sinister) housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers:
"I could see she despised me, marking with all the snobbery of her class that I was no great lady, that I was humble, shy and diffident."
SST.
PS * Ah, the subtle and mysterious gradations of our English class system!Where do we all fit into this nightmarish Great Chain of Being? It still exists! I love George Orwell's sardonic comment about his own family, whom he famously described as being " lower-middle-upper-class". I'd describe myself as upper-lower-middle-class, with delusions at times of becoming middle-middle-middle-class (I'm working on it).
" -
Message 25
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 12th October 2011
Temperance
My "uni friend" eventually about ten years ago accused me of having just used her and her friends "to gain entry into the Upper Middle Class".. But as perhaps everyone on the MB knows I can drive people into places where they would not choose to go. ..
Cass -
Message 26
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Wednesday, 12th October 2011
Ah, the subtle and mysterious gradations of our English class system!Where do we all fit into this nightmarish Great Chain of Being? It still exists!Β
I think it would be wrong to look for any great historical accuracy in Downton Abbey, it is fiction and one I am enjoying thoroughly!
Although one thing I think the series is portraying very well is that it is the twighlight of an era for all, whether upstairs, downstairs, male or female. But, in particular, the beginning of the end of the age of affordability and viability of big houses with their great estates. -
Message 27
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Wednesday, 12th October 2011
Ah, the subtle and mysterious gradations of our English class system!Where do we all fit into this nightmarish Great Chain of Being? It still exists!Β
I think it would be wrong to look for any great historical accuracy in Downton Abbey, it is fiction and one I am enjoying thoroughly!
Although one thing I think the series is portraying very well is that it is the twighlight of an era for all, whether upstairs, downstairs, male or female. But, in particular, the beginning of the end of the age of affordability and viability of big houses with their great estates. Β
Oh drat, I've misquoted George Orwell - he said he belonged to the lower-upper-middle class, not the lower-middle-upper. I'm getting really confused these days - I like to pretend it's my eyesight that's going, but actually I think it's my brain.
ID - yes, fair points, but it's all so *bitty* and annoying. The ideas - good ones as you point out - just aren't developed properly - like the love affair between Lady Sybil and the chap on the farm - it just fizzled out after a couple of furtive embraces by the tractor.
And the adverts are *infuriating*, especially that insurance company's own little mini-dramas. Drives me nuts. -
Message 28
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Wednesday, 12th October 2011
Ah, the subtle and mysterious gradations of our English class system!Where do we all fit into this nightmarish Great Chain of Being? It still exists!Β
I think it would be wrong to look for any great historical accuracy in Downton Abbey, it is fiction and one I am enjoying thoroughly!
Although one thing I think the series is portraying very well is that it is the twighlight of an era for all, whether upstairs, downstairs, male or female. But, in particular, the beginning of the end of the age of affordability and viability of big houses with their great estates. Β
Oh drat, I've misquoted George Orwell - he said he belonged to the lower-upper-middle class, not the lower-middle-upper. I'm getting really confused these days - I like to pretend it's my eyesight that's going, but actually I think it's my brain.
ID - yes, fair points, but it's all so *bitty* and annoying. The ideas - good ones as you point out - just aren't developed properly - like the love affair between Lady Sybil and that chap on the farm - it just fizzled out after a couple of furtive embraces by the tractor.
And the adverts are absolutely *infuriating*, especially that insurance company's own little mini-dramas. Drives me nuts. -
Message 29
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Wednesday, 12th October 2011
Sorry, don't know what happened there - I did say my brain's going.
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Message 30
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 12th October 2011
Temperance
Re the farm romance.. It did not "peter out" the lady of the farm put an end to procedings.. When they have finished with the dramas of the service men in the big house that "hook" is surely likely to re-emerge.. One of the signs of a good commercial script (as opposed to a Cass post) is that there is nothing superfluous or surplus to requirements.
By the way- glad you found "The Whig Interpretation of History" potentially interesting.
Cass -
Message 31
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Thursday, 13th October 2011
Hi there. Did anyone see Downton Abbey last night. Just wondered how on earth the Captain and his man escaped being shot captured or even vaguley injured when they ended up in an enemy trap and how on earth would the enemy not have been aware of them when they were so close to them? Am i wrong?Β
One of the signs of a good commercial script...is that there is nothing superfluous or surplus to requirements. Β
Mmm - depends what you mean by requirements, Cass.
If you're not careful you can end up with something resembling a great frothy mass of nothing. That's just what Fellowes is offering us in my opinion - it's a sugary meringue of a programme - looks sumptuous and impressive, I'll give you that - but there's no real *substance* to it. But I realise I'm in a minority here. Everyone I know is loving it.
The "episode" Jane mentions in her original post is a good example of lack of substance. There's certainly nothing "surplus" about Fellowes's writing of this incident. In fact there simply isn't an incident at all, let alone anything that could remotely be called an episode! We see the Captain and William running into an enemy patrol - then nothing, until lo and behold the pair of them walk cheerily into the concert room back at Downton Abbey as if they've been on a corporate "Paintball" day out, not experiencing the horrors of WW1 trench warfare and possible capture by the Germans. Would it really have been "surplus to requirements" to have shown us more? Couldn't the episode have been used to develop the characters of Matthew and William - shared danger - shared terror of death - the breakdown of class barriers? Perhaps William could have displayed unexpected courage and resourcefulness? Goodness knows there are enough authentic accounts of hairbreadth escapes for Fellowes to have drawn on. I'd have liked to have seen William matured - and hardened - by what happened.
But whatever, as they say - it's only entertainment. Sigh.
And 13 million people can't be wrong - can they?
In haste,
SST. -
Message 32
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Thursday, 13th October 2011
frothy mass of nothing. That's just what Fellowes is offering us in my opinion - it's a sugary meringue of a programme - looks sumptuous and impressive, I'll give you that - but there's no real *substance* to it. But I realise I'm in a minority here. Everyone I know is loving it.Β
Well not quite in the minority anyway, I agree with you Temp! It is all show and froth with no real substance, but I'm not watching it with the expectation of anything more than light diversion and entertainment.
I'm currently reading Ken Follett's new book, Fall of Giants, which is along the same lines and set in the same era as Downton Abbey. There is much more substance to the story (as you'd expect from Follett) but I must admit the the ins and outs of the politics between Germany, Britain, France, Austria and Russia can be a bit much when all I want to do is get on with the characters.War and politics is not really my thing, I'd much rather read about how WWI effected everyday people. -
Message 33
Posted by jane (U14068200) on Thursday, 13th October 2011
Thanks for your most interesting replies! Im overwhelmed at such knowledge. From now on i will watch with enjoyment and fun despite the adverts and the historical not so true bits.!
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Message 34
Posted by miss elizabeth (U10895934) on Thursday, 13th October 2011
now as to the curling tongs... surely they were electric? (I thought I saw some wire). I know they HAD electricity, but only for more important things surely.
A minor detail. A great series. -
Message 35
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Friday, 14th October 2011
now as to the curling tongs... surely they were electric? (I thought I saw some wire). I know they HAD electricity, but only for more important things surely.
A minor detail. A great series. Β
Even I will concede that this line - on the subject of newfangleness - is brilliant. It's the Dowager Countess, of course:
"First electricity, now telephones. I feel as if I'm living in an H.G.Wells novel." -
Message 36
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Friday, 14th October 2011
I noticed the curling tongs too! They looked suspiciously modern, but curling tongs of the time would surely, at least, need a brazier present in the rooms for heating them? I couldn't see one, but then, I didn't notice any wires either.......
Maggie Smith is brilliant as the Dowager Countess, easily my favourite character and one of my favourite actresses too. I know you think she grimaces and gossips too much Temp, but what else has a person to do all day if there are others doing everything for you? lol -
Message 37
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Sunday, 16th October 2011
OK, OK, so it wasn't a bad episode tonight.
And like the Dowager I have a bit of a cold. -
Message 38
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Wednesday, 19th October 2011
I haven't quite wanted to check this thread too much until the second series actually started here. I would not want to miss an episode of this and everyone here thinks it's wonderful, but I certainly blinked at it winning an Emmy award for best series. It does seem to be rather frothy - though our household rather goes in for frothy English stuff, like Midsomer Murders and Poirot and Lark Rise etc. And it is rather obvious in some of its goodies/baddies bits (not that I mind - I quite like knowing who to cheer for).
I do prefer this nice view of upstairs downstairs to the attitude of most writers of modern crime, who have an irritating (to my mind) way of seeing anyone wealthy as uncaring and unsympathetic, and anyone working class as doughty and hard-working, or at least put-upon. I would like a little more subtlety of portrayal. Probably would in this too if I were reading it rather than watching. Actors can manage to show a bit of character variety even when their writers don't.
As for the opening post query, it's surprising how many people didn't get killed in situations where you might have expected them to. Anyway it's too early to kill off main characters!
BTW Brideshead Revisited is the only television series I can remember where I curled up and watched every minute, every second really. Usually my TV viewing is a little hit and miss. I read the book a couple of years ago - Waugh's writing was great but I didn't quite enjoy some of the themes and ideas.
Cheers, Caro. -
Message 39
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Wednesday, 19th October 2011
I remember thoroughly enjoying Brideshead Revisited at the time too and eagerly awaiting every episode. With this in mind I recently decided to watch it again after all these years and was most surprised to discover that I was bored to tears by the whole thing, struggled through it until the 3rd episode whereupon I gave it up as a thorough waste of time. Odd how our tastes and views change as we grow older, I've had similar experiences when re-reading books that I'd previously enjoyed when younger.
Yes Temp, this week's episode of Downton was only just OK. Very disapointing that the story line now seems to be following so many WWI dramas that have gone before. Hero crippled in war, no heirs for the heir, wallowing in a massive dose of self pity and sending the love (or loves in this case) of his life away. Ho hum. -
Message 40
Posted by jane (U14068200) on Wednesday, 19th October 2011
Ho Hum. No idont think he has sent both the loves of his life away, watch this space....ps its also the only time i get towatch our sky tv etc tele, usually it all sport but i did put my foot down this time and anyway what the hell if it isnt always accurate, maggie smith is brilliant!
-
Message 41
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Wednesday, 19th October 2011
After just two new episodes here (and I have to take some care not to read too carefully plot outlines here) the reviewer here has said the war scenes remind him of the Blackadder ones. Not quite like those of course, but tending to the caricature. The real story is the examination of honour/dishonour at Downton Abbey itself and especially in what he calls the main story, the love story of two downstairs servants.
I think there are a lot of stories in this series, so I wouldn't necessarily say one was the main one. It varies from programme to programme which one they focus on and I have noticed they do tend to make each episode thematic, so stories match each other to some degree or have the same theme running through it. -
Message 42
Posted by jane (U14068200) on Thursday, 20th October 2011
I agree. I think this is the story of the lives of those living in this great house. Parallel love lives-perhaps the Captain will marry Mary but not without great anguish, and the servants also have their romantic dreams which are difficlt to achieve. I think this is also a theme running through.I look forward to sunday, just wish there were less adverts. I was told this period is when the TV company make their money from prime time advertising. Perhaps Downton could be screened at adifferent time xx
-
Message 43
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Thursday, 20th October 2011
We don't have any ad-less television in NZ so are used to everything being interrupted by ads (and sometimes cut to fit the timeframe that is left). SKY is supposed not to have ads but they do, and anyway most people consider promos ads, though the TV channels themselves obviously don't. Only on Easter Sunday and Christmas Day and half of Anzac do we not have ads on all our free-to-air channels. But we don't have a television licence - I would willingly pay one to have fewer ads. Or rather fewer ad breaks.
-
Message 44
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Wednesday, 26th October 2011
So this week's episode has picked up in pace compared to previous episodes, we must be building for the finale in this year's series.
Although I was surprised at the mention of refugees and the pressing need for their care. Were there many refugees to Britain during and after WWI? I know of the thousands of refugees due to WWII but can't say I remember talk of refugees to Britain because of WWI. -
Message 45
Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Wednesday, 26th October 2011
Well there were some Belgian refugees here in Darkest East Northants during WW1, cared for by a small community of people who didn't have very much themselves. Also, if I remember correctly, Agatha Christie's Poirot came to England from Belgium at that time or just after.
-
Message 46
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Wednesday, 26th October 2011
So this week's episode has picked up in pace compared to previous episodes, we must be building up for the finale in this year's series. Β
Yes, and that hint of a twitch experienced by Matthew in the shrubbery was surely a hopeful sign. There's bound to be a miracle cure just in time for - if not actually *during* - the Downton Abbey Xmas Special. ITV have definitely got a bumper Christmas Day episode planned - the Royle Family won't stand a chance in the ratings.
Will Mr. Bates be done for murder?! Is Sir Richard Carlisle a *thoroughly* bad egg (certainly looks that way)? How can we get rid of the tiresomely devoted Lavinia? Is the Earl falling for the new housemaid?
The many plots thicken!
Were there many refugees to Britain during and after WW1? Β
I seem to remember the original Upstairs Downstairs also had an episode - a very serious one - about Belgian refugees. Lady Georgina had to translate their stories for the Eaton Place kitchen staff and pretty harrowing stuff it was too. -
Message 47
Posted by MB (U177470) on Friday, 28th October 2011
So this week's episode has picked up in pace compared to previous episodes, we must be building for the finale in this year's series.
Although I was surprised at the mention of refugees and the pressing need for their care. Were there many refugees to Britain during and after WWI? I know of the thousands of refugees due to WWII but can't say I remember talk of refugees to Britain because of WWI. Β
I think Making History did an item on this topic a year or so ago.
"In August 1914, 64,000 Belgians fleeing the German invasion at the start of the Great War (now known as World War I) sought refuge and shelter in Folkestone."
MB -
Message 48
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Friday, 28th October 2011
The letters are interesting. Click on text to enlarge. -
Message 49
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Friday, 28th October 2011
Will Spanish 'flu arrive this Sunday? I bet it does.
I'll wager a fiver Lavinia sneezes first. -
Message 50
Posted by jane (U14068200) on Friday, 28th October 2011
Run Lady Mary run you are being threatened.And if Lady Lavinia does get the flu or worse then Mary will have to comfort Matthew-wont she?Ok i enjoy this series, the lives of those living in this great house but does anyone have any ideas what the last episode might bring us? Nasty Nazis being invited as in the Remains of the Day?I think the Earl is too intelligent for this to happen.
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