Downton Abbey review: ‘Thank heaven there’s not much more of this tedium’ (original) (raw)

Cue piano, arse of Isis the yellow labrador, big cedar tree, very big house in the country … here we go then, the beginning of the end, of Downton Abbey (ITV, Sunday). Hang on, wasn’t Isis killed off in the last series? This one must be the replacement.

More dogs, lots more – foxhounds. I do like a hunt scene. And even though it may lack in plot and point and substance, if there’s one thing that Downton does do well it’s a big spectacle.

Oops, Lady Mary has fallen off her mount, into the mud, in spite of adopting the new (for ladies) and very unladylike (blame the suffragettes) astride-style of riding. She was put off by new character Rita from Liverpool, who turns out to be her blackmailer. Typical, stereotype the scouser, boo. Rita witnessed Mary’s dirty weekend at the Grand Hotel with Viscount Gillingham and now she wants one – a grand, not a dirty weekend with Viscount Gillingham – or she’ll go to the News of the World. A newspaper apparently, from back in the day. The horse is unharmed from the incident, happily, and is led away for a well-earned rub down and a bucket of oats.

Meanwhile, downstairs (though the line is becoming increasingly blurred, now we’re up to 1925, they’re really hammering home those CHANGING TIMES), Mrs Hughes is worried about whether Carson will be expecting his oats when they tie the knot. Will it be a full marriage; in other words, a real one with everything that involves, happy ending and all? Oh yes, says Carson, stamping a hoof, snorting through his nostrils, and whinnying magnificently, manfully, even rather movingly. Rub down, happy ending, oats, the works. “Well then, Mr Carson, if you want me, you can have me – to quote Oliver Cromwell – warts and all,” says Mrs Hughes. Oh my, maybe too much information.

The longest, most drawn-out storyline in soap history – Bates, Anna, the murder of Green the valet, whodunnit, he dunnit, no, she dunnit – may actually have reached its ending, and another happy one. Someone else dunnit, and has confessed. It’s not all happy though; no miscarriage of justice any more but actual miscarriage – Anna’s – and all the injustice of that. And I’m not happy that it looks as though I’m never going to see Bates swing, which has been pretty much all I’ve been excited about since series two. I haven’t entirely given up, sudden and unexpected U-turns aren’t entirely unknown at Downton Abbey. #HangBates

There is some very tedious business about a hospital, but it’s really just a way to keep Isobel Crawley bickering with the dowager countess, and to provide Dame Maggie Smith with a few of her withering putdowns. Here comes one. Everyone ready? “Does it ever get cold on the moral high ground?” she asks Isobel, and a nation applauds a national treasure from its living rooms. Marvellous.

Time for more CHANGING TIMES. So Daisy’s off in a car, to the auction at Mallerton House and speaking her mind to toffs, though to be fair she does apologise. And in the kitchen the staff are knocking back the Veuve Clicquot. Lord and Lady Grantham are down there too, snaffling leftovers from the newfangled refrigerator. The world’s gone mad and upside down. Thank heaven there’s not much more of this.

And here, on the other side at the same time (for the people who still watch TV like that), is another very big house in the country, more early-20th- century class structures and social taboos, another period costume drama: The Go-Between (BBC1, Sunday). But a more edifying experience. Sensitively adapted (as all these Sunday-night BBC dramas have been so far) from LP Hartley by Adrian Hodges, it has a/the novel’s intensity, subtlety and complexity of character and theme (innocence, betrayal, the past and what it does to someone). And its direction and satisfactory arc – it knows where it’s going and it’s a bloody good story.

Beautifully made, too, and performed, with a special shout-out to young Jack Hollington, not just for his convincing performance as young Leo but also for being a totally convincing young Jim Broadbent (old Leo). And to Ben Batt (Ted Burgess) for the best topless scything since Poldark. Not too Downton (Abbey – shabby) from Joanna Vanderham as Marian either.

Maybe it’s silly to compare, they’re different things, but this is Veuve Clicquot, to Downton’s Babycham.