The Reality of 'Downton Abbey'
Reviewed by JUDITH NEWMAN
Three books explore the true lives behind the fictional world of "Downton Abbey."
The TV Watch
Forget War; Romance Is in the Air
From left, Maggie Smith, Elizabeth McGovern and Hugh Bonneville in "Downton Abbey," returning to PBS on Sunday.
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
Published: January 6, 2012
That second, irresistible slice of chocolate cake is almost always too much. It tastes good, of course, but the pleasurable surprise has dissipated. A sated palate turns discerning — the frosting seems a little too sweet, the base too rich.
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And yet somehow, there is an appetite for thirds.
The same can be said for the second season of “Downton Abbey,” which returns on Sunday to PBS with a flush of excitement and heightened expectations usually associated with “Mad Men” or even, back in the day, “Dallas.”
This elegant soap opera about masters and their servants in the twilight of the British Empire was a shameless throwback to “Upstairs Downstairs” and “The Forsyte Saga.” Season 2 is in many ways as captivating and addictive as the first, but this time around, the series comes off as a shameless throwback to itself.
The creator, Julian Fellowes, conceived “Downton Abbey” as a mini-series, but the viewer response was so enthusiastic that he and the producers decided to add more seasons. Accordingly, it’s a sequel that feels like a prolongation: plot twists are repeated, and the same devices are used in too many scenes. (Nosy servants overhear every private conversation, and nobody ever learns to close the door or talk outside.)
Most of all, the pivotal drawing room romance between Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) and Matthew Crawley (Dan Stevens) is now set amid the horror and mass destruction of World War I. The blend of coronets and cataclysm is harder to pull off.
Mr. Fellowes wrote the screenplay for Robert Altman’s “Gosford Park,” but in his own version of a period drama, Mr. Fellowes dispensed with the dark satire — and censure — that distinguished that film. “Gosford Park,” like “The Remains of the Day” and “Atonement,” limned the grandeur of a fading aristocracy with glints of delusion and corruption. “Downton Abbey” doesn’t have the same subversive core. If anything, it echoes a nostalgia for lost time that suffuses films like “Midnight in Paris” and “The Artist.”
The concerns of Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville); his American wife, Cora (Elizabeth McGovern); his redoubtable mother, the Dowager Countess (Maggie Smith); and three eligible daughters are mirrored by a hierarchy of servants with their own parallel web of romances and ambitions. The Crawleys keep their feelings from one another, but they unburden themselves to trusted maids and valets. With a few exceptions, the help is so loyal to the family and its position that any slip in prestige or loosening of standards is taken as a personal dishonor.
“Downton Abbey” is a lighthearted look at the class system that is deeply romantic about affairs of the heart. It’s not hard to see why it was such a hit: the series has a connoisseur’s eye for the most exquisite emblems of privilege and breeding and a fan’s gusto for intrigue and melodrama.
The story reopens in 1916 at the Battle of the Somme, where Matthew is an officer trying to keep his troops alive in an unending cascade of explosions and carnage. One moment he is face down in a bomb crater under raining shells, an injured man twitching next to him. The next he is packing up to go on leave, which includes a trip to Downton Abbey. (He calls to mind the line about the trenches, sometimes attributed to the actor and former soldier Ernest Thesiger: “My dear, the noise! And the people!”)
Matthew and Mary are still star-crossed; even war can’t repair their derailed romance. That impasse is echoed downstairs, where the love affair between Anna (Joanne Froggatt), a housemaid, and the valet, Mr. Bates (Brendan Coyle), keeps coming unraveled.
The war hasn’t left Lord Grantham’s world untouched: Footmen are called up for military service, and parlor maids have to fill in to serve dinner. Matthew’s pushy, do-good mother, Isobel (Penelope Wilton), has wheedled Lord Grantham into giving over part of the house to a convalescent station for wounded officers, where his youngest daughter, Lady Sybil (Jessica Brown-Findlay), volunteers as a nurse.
Season 2 pays lip service to a war that slaughtered a generation and battered the British class system — there are allusions that recall “Regeneration,” the World War I trilogy by Pat Barker, and Vera Brittain’s memoir, “Testament of Youth.” But they are made in passing.
A little like the movie “War Horse,” which is more about the horse than about the war, this series isn’t interested in using its main characters to explore the war’s devastation and tectonic social shifts; combat serves as a plot point and palate cleanser in between voyeuristic looks at high society. So battle scenes and hospital emergencies are clichéd or perfunctory, secondary to exquisite tableaus of swirling chiffon skirts, crystal decanters and lavish country landscapes.
Even the most devastating wounds are bound up and set aside in time to dress for dinner.
The series’s saving grace is Lady Mary, a Jane Austen heroine who harbors both pride and prejudice. Coolly self-contained and judgmental, Mary is her own worst enemy, but along with withering hauteur, she has self-awareness and a dry sense of humor. Deep down, of course, she has also inherited her snobbish grandmother’s loving heart.
As the Dowager Countess, Ms. Smith has many of the best lines and usually the last word. When her middle granddaughter, Lady Edith, frets that she will end up a spinster, Lady Violet says briskly, “Don’t be defeatist, Dear, it’s very middle class.”
There is nothing middle class about “Downton Abbey.” Even a world war can’t sever the bond between aristocrats and the servants who love them.
看過四集之後
我奇怪這半個世界都放映的影集
怎會沒書呢
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downton_Abbey
有啦
Book
The World of Downton Abbey, a book featuring a behind-the-scenes look at Downton Abbey was released on 15 September 2011. It was written by Jessica Fellowes (the niece of Julian Fellowes) and was published by HarperCollins.[66][67]
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唐頓莊園 DOWNTON ABBEY
http://www.pts.org.tw/downton/about.html
公視
Downton Abbey is a British television period drama series, produced by British media company Carnival Films for the ITV network. The series is set during the late Edwardian era (after Edward VII's death) and the First World War on the fictional estate of Downton Abbey in Yorkshire, and features an ensemble cast. It was created and principally written by actor and writer Julian Fellowes, and premiered on ITV on 26 September 2010.
Reception of the programme was predominantly positive; ratings were extremely high for what is usually considered a "genre" show, and the first series picked up a number of awards and nominations after its initial run. It has subsequently become the most successful British costume drama since the 1981 television serial version of Brideshead Revisited,[1] and in 2011 it entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the "most critically acclaimed television show" for the year, becoming the first British show to win the accolade.[2]
On 3 November 2011, ITV confirmed that a third series has been commissioned and will be broadcast from September 2012.[3]
The series is set in the fictional Downton Abbey, the Yorkshire country house of the Earl and Countess of Grantham, and follows the lives of the aristocratic Crawley family and their servants early in the reign of George V. The first series spans the two years prior to the Great War, commencing with news of the sinking of the Titanic, an event that sets the story in motion. The second series covers the years 1916 to 1919.
Highclere Castle in Hampshire[4] was used for exterior shots of Downton Abbey as well as for the majority of the interior filming. The servants' living areas were constructed and filmed at Ealing Studios.[5]
The village of Bampton in Oxfordshire was used for filming the outdoor scenes, most notably St Mary's Church and the village library, which serves as the entrance to the cottage hospital.[6] The North Yorkshire towns of Malton, Thirsk, Easingwold, Kirkby, Kirkbymoorside, Middlesbrough, Ripon and Richmond have also been mentioned by characters in the series.
The first series cost an estimated £1 million per episode, and is the most successful British period drama since Brideshead Revisited, with British ratings exceeding 10 million viewers.[1] The series was also well received in the United States, averaging over 6 million viewers per episode.[7]
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在此同時，遙遠曼徹斯特的鄉村律師馬修(Matthew Crawley)接到一封信，身為伯爵遠親的他竟然是唐頓莊園的繼承人，這對中產階級的母子突然進入了上流社會的生活圈，猶如進入另一個世界，處境十分尷尬。 
由 大卡司瑪姬史密斯(Maggie Smith)和休邦尼維爾 (Hugh Bonneville)領銜演出，奧斯卡金獎編劇朱利安費羅斯(Julian Fellowes)創作的最新作品，在英國播出時造成收視熱潮，成為二十年來收視最高的英國影集，第一季最後一集的播出更吸引了超過一千一百萬名觀眾收 看，連向來習慣在網路收看的年輕族群也被吸引鎖定電視首播。 
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