Lots of discussion of ITV’s Downton Abbey on Radio 4’s Broadcasting House and in the Sundays. There is a fascinating piece by Simon Heffer in the Sunday Telegraph extolling its virtues. It turns out that two of his friends are involved: writer Julian Fellowes and actor Hugh Bonneville. He concludes that the acting is excellent and the 1912 setting assiduously accurate. He adds that it is a shame that the series will only run to seven episodes.
As I look forward to tonight’s fourth episode, I have to agree with him on all counts.
But there is much more to the success of Downton Abbey than mere technical excellence behind and in front of the camera.
Like all good period drama, this has a resonance far beyond its own setting. This is Brideshead Revisited for the Cameron-Clegg era. As the political class settles in to the comfortable reality of a country run by the boys (and it is the boys) from Eton, Westminster and St Pauls, so the nation will be soothed every Sunday evening by what Heffer calls “that halcyon period between the death of Edward VII and the digging of the trenches on the Western Front”.
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