Down at the Abbey

The success of ITV’s _Downton Abbey_ is easy to explain. That said, let’s do so in a lengthy digression.

You see, television is a great deal like food. Firstly, we generally know what types are good for us and what is bad. Secondly, we may know this, but we still largely pick the latter: X Factor and chips, rather than The Killing and a bowl of wild rice.

Now, as we must be legally reminded every four minutes, we are in the middle of a massive economic downturn, the evidence of which is all around us: CEOs scrambling for sofa change, stockbrokers leaping off sharply descending graphs, once-prosperous magnates now forced to panhandle in order to afford to insult dead soldiers. And what do people do during recessions? Well, on the apocryphal advice of Queen Marie Antoinette (the wisdom of which can only now be grasped), they buy cake. A great, stodgy sugary hug that makes all the world’s problems disappear into crumbly, moist oblivion.

Eat enough of it and you could probably happily hibernate through the whole credit crunch as a sleepy, van-sized hedgehog. Admit it, you’re probably thinking about cake right now. You can continue to do so for the five remaining seconds of this paragraph.

Right, back to TV. Without wishing to stretch this metaphor to its tensile limits, _Downton Abbey_ is definite cake, a huge slice of Victoria Sponge filled with jam and decked with raspberries and cream (stay focused, people). But, here’s the thing: it’s pretending it’s not; it’s claiming to be seared sea bream on a bed of samphire. With a lentil salad. Let me be clear: it’s certainly not bad cake, but cake it undoubtedly is.

_Downton Abbey_ is monstrously, wonderfully, intensely silly; full of awkward exposition, hammy acting and an almost heroic capacity to skirt over any real historical engagement. However, with enough swooning editorials and our national gift for collective self-deception, people will eagerly swallow a stomach full of buttery nonsense, fully convinced of its nutritious quality.

Concerning the trials of an heirless aristocratic family and their staff when forced to turn to their middle class cousins to continue the noble line of Grantham, the show aims to be a meticulous study of the nature and causes of societal transformation in the twentieth century. In fact, it’s actually a soap opera with the world’s biggest costume budget. Despite being avowedly a historical drama, one could come away from _Downton Abbey_ knowing less about the era than a six year old who once saw half an episode of _Blackadder IV_.

Frankly, show-runner Julian Fellowes is more out of his depth than Ronnie Corbett in a king-size jacuzzi full of Nobel Prize winners. Thus, all but the most significant external events are glossed over in about five minutes. Socialism? Erm, put in a chippy Irish chauffeur. Suffragettes? Let’s say, the youngest daughter wants to wear trousers. Social upheaval? Why not have them fall tediously in love with each other? Even the impact of the Great War, which transforms the house into a military hospital in series two, is largely explored through the dearth of available footmen, before clumsily shifting gear in the fourth episode to capture the horror of war with some picturesque injuries and a spot of light shellshock. It’s difficult to satirise ‘back before Christmas’ optimism when the portrayal of the subsequent violence has all the striking pathos of a dropped hat.

This deficit in gritty realism is further bolstered by the presence of an almost infinitely benign cast. Seriously, the last time this number of selfless do-gooders were concentrated on a TV screen, Noel Edmonds was loudly patronising them. Brendan Coyle’s Bates, the stupidly noble valet with a tragic past, is essentially and repeatedly characterised with the formula: “You think I’m a good guy, but in fact… I’m a really, REALLY good guy.”

Maggie Smith is now forever destined to be described by idiots as ’delightfully waspish’. Even the designated villains display hidden hearts of gold every other episode, with the result that they’re not so much antagonists as they are slightly more scowling versions of the heroes.

Hugh Bonneville – despite the confusing opening titles – does not play a dog, but actually a rather stern yet fair patriarch, delivering a performance of particularly ludicrous benevolence. Barely a minute can pass without him standing up for one of the lower orders or delivering intensely worthy speeches about honour or responsibility to the utter bore of everyone in the room.

The zenith of his good-chappery is achieved during his dressing gown-clad, bedtime chats with wife Cora (generally about his moral obligations or the pace of change), which are hugely improved by assuming he’s about to jump onto the bed, shouting “It’s Hugh time”. On the basis of a pregnancy storyline in series one, this does actually happen, albeit off camera.
So then, _Downton Abbey_: the thinking person’s soap opera for people who don’t want to think too much.

Make no mistake, it’s great fun. But the next time you witness a friend or even a relative describing it as a quality drama or a televisual triumph, slap the remote to the ground and make them watch BBC 4 for two hours.

They can have some _Downton Abbey_ for dessert.