Rating: Worth ALL of my time; and will watch it over again – it’s that good
Buy it: Instant Video on Amazon.com or on DVD at www.shoppbs.org
Okay, it isn’t a movie at all. But with episodes lasting 1 1/2 hours, it seems like a movie…every week! Downton Abbey takes place in England in 1912 and cruises through to the war in 1914 and onto the end of the WWI, ringing in the new year of 1920, where Season 2 leaves you with hope.
A little like the theme of ‘Upstairs Downstairs’ it shows how an Earl of Grantham and his family: wife and three daughters, plus his mother live; the pomp and circumstance with all the morning hunting activities and afternoon teas; mixed with the servants of the time.
Everyone had ‘duties’ to uphold while the world events effect everyone; the Titanic tragedy leaves the master of the house, once the Earl dies, to a distant cousin. The first daughter is left out of an inheritance, only because she is a woman. World War I and the Spanish Flu hit the country and its citizens very hard, not keeping royalty to it’s own bubble; and you see how these events change everyone and how the order of things that have been done for generations, begin to change.
The youngest daughter falls in love with someone, not of her ‘kind’; and the middle daughter is just that, over looked.
The help also has rank and file, and it’s lonely at the top with tough decisions to be made; but even when you are in the middle trying to get ahead or at the bottom of the chain; the series of stories interwoven and the troubles each person gets into, leave the viewer begging for more. You fall in love with the characters, the costumes, the castle; even the villains. A cast of characters can only be played by some marvelous actors and actresses.
I cannot wait for season 3, airing in the United States in January 2013.
