You may be familiar with the Saturday Night Live recurring skit "Merv the Perv", in which Chris Parnell plays a horndog named Merv who speaks in double, triple, and quadruple-entendres to every woman he sees. One of my favorite versions of this skit is when Merv's cousin from England, "Steve the Skeeve" comes to visit. Steve says the exact same disgusting, pervy things as Merv, but because he has an elegant mustache and says them in a debonair English accent, the women go wild for Steve. They tell Merv, "Why can't you be more like your cousin Steve? Steve is a gentleman."
And so it is with cult BBC/PBS hit Downton Abbey. The show is chock full of soap opera plot lines, melodrama, catfighting, and illicit sex (gay and straight), and yet it comes across as a classy, elegant window into a time gone by. Albeit a time when "the help" spent their lives catering to the whims of the rich and women couldn't vote or inherit property. You know, the Good Old Days.
The first season of Downton opens on the morning of April 16th, 1912--the day after the RMS Titanic sank. The Earl and Countess of Grantham--aka Robert and Cora Crawley--awake to find out that their two closest male heirs to the family estate were on the fated ship and are dead. This leads to the central conflict of the series: since the Earl and Countess only have daughters who, by law, cannot inherit the estate, who will Downton Abbey fall to after Robert Crawley dies?
This questions branches out into a number of other plot points that concern the seven episodes of the first season, including the intricate laws of English inheritance, the potential suitors of eldest daughter Mary and how they may or may not be advantageous to the family, the schemings of the maids, butlers, and other servants, and the question of women's rights in late Edwardian England.
And also--World War I and how it will change everything. But that issue is left to season 2.
Although Downton Abbey may be dismissed as "costume porn" in the vein of made-for-TV Jane Austen adaptations, the series is complicated, intriguing, well-written, and often very funny (Maggie Smith, playing the Dowager Countess, gets many of the best and snarkiest lines). Plot lines often take a turn for the unexpected--even shocking--such as when (SPOILER) a foreign visitor to the estate engages in some illicit nooky with daughter Mary and promptly...dies of a heart attack in her bed. Yikes!
Fans of British humor, history buffs, and those who simply like well-made television will all find something to delight in with Downton Abbey. I personally can't wait to get started on season 2.
4.5 out of 5 stars
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