Home > Martin Bright

Sunday 27 May 2012

Downton Abbey: the new Brideshead

Sunday, 17th October 2010

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".

There was a scene in one of the early episodes when the newly arrived heir to the estate (he's from Manchester and therefore not quite nop-notch) decides he does not need the services of a personal manservant. In an act of near-revolutionary innovation the clod decides he can dress himself. However, after a quite word, he is made to see that he is effectively doing the poor valet out of a job. This, he accepts, is just the way it is and should be.

No one in the Coalition government is suggesting that a return to the upstairs-downstairs economy would bring a return to full employment (although millionaire Phillip Hammond came close in opposition when he said that paying interns was a waste of public money).

But Downton Abbey's examination of "noblesse oblige" at the beginning of the twentieth century has an undoubted relevance at the beginning of the 21st.

Downton Abbey is a television programme, not a programme for government. But as an expression of the cultural politics of our times, it is every bit as powerful as X-Factor, which immediately precedes it in the schedules.

Did Fellowes intend it as a political commentary? Surely it can't be a coincidence that the paterfamilias at the centre of the drama, played by Bonneville himself, is the fictional Earl of... Grantham.

Filed under: BBC (87 more articles) , David Cameron (1914 more articles) , Downton Abbey (1 more articles) , Eton (1 more articles) , Noblesse oblige (1 more articles) , Simon Heffer (1 more articles) , X-Factor (1 more articles)

Previous Back to Martin Bright Next

Blogs: Susan Hill | Alex Massie | Melanie Phillips | Coffee House | Faith Based

Actions: Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comments (13)

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Post comment

Anne Wotana Kaye 1

October 17th, 2010 11:44am Report this comment

Not only is this great viewing, but a wonderful tonic with which to face the week ahead. Television drama in which I don't need to use the subtitles since the cast are speaking English in clear voices and do not swallow their words or mutter in animal grunts. I must mentin that when I saw that "Pillars of the Earth" was to be serialised on Saturday nights, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Two serials on a usually barren weekend! I will reserve my judgement on the second, however. This has been produced by a multinational crew, Canada, Germany, Austria, whatever, and somehow has captured the 'goulash' qualities such works often maintain. Even allowing for the great time distance, the scenery isn't typically England and lacks an authentic feel. Lots of bodice ripping and foul language, bloody killings and heroines wearing modern day cosmetics and good manicures. As I say, I'll give it another week. Downton Abbey, by contrast, I fell in love with it at sight.

Rhoda Klapp

October 17th, 2010 11:47am Report this comment

Any clues as to what the Turk was up to with Lady Mary?

Any suggestion that this may not be a political allegory, but just a newly-written costume drama because all the genuine old ones have been done? And of course the old ones weren't allowed to have benders.

Martin Bright

October 17th, 2010 1:09pm Report this comment

Come on Rhoda! Have you watched Brideshead recently? Incest, homo-erotic longing... Catholicism!
I think it's best not to read too much into the political allegory of the death of a Turk in the bed of Lady Mary. Although, the thought of her natural son being adopted by the low-born upstart heir to the Earldom (whom she surely has to marry) is rather tantalising.

Mrs M

October 17th, 2010 5:17pm Report this comment

Of course, Martin, maybe it'll be a girl, and won't matter...But then again, that won't be good for the plot!

Rhoda Klapp

October 18th, 2010 8:56am Report this comment

Silly Rhoda, putting this into a CH thread on universities. This is where it was meant to be.
**************

I'm shocked at the suggestion that those nice boys in Brideshead were anything other than good chums.

*********************

I see Downton last night picked up the obligatory socialist and a suffragette wannabe. Although this is actually contemperaneous with the Liberals giving us the welfare state, they are not mentioned. Next up. WW1. Or HG Wells and GBS come to tea, to the disgust of Maggie Smith. And increasingly I am coming to believe this is neither a serious attempt at a costume drama nor a political allegory, but merely a chance to give Maggie a run out, smashing her way through every scene to the discomfiture of the rest of the cast. I'm hoping she will play me in the biopic.

Wily Trout

October 18th, 2010 2:33pm Report this comment

There are a couple of nasty villians building up a head of steam to complicate the plot - 3 episodes down and 4 to go.

Anne Wotana Kaye 1

October 18th, 2010 2:40pm Report this comment

Wily Trout: Hi Wily Trout,
Please no "spoilers", I'd rather be enlightened on the night as it were! I can guess who the villains are, the odious O'Brien woman and the nasty footman.

Old Fogey

October 18th, 2010 4:27pm Report this comment

One clear political message so far "You can't trust Johnny Turk!"

Wily Trout

October 19th, 2010 1:10pm Report this comment

Anne Wotana Kaye 1: hello!
Let us hope that the villainy, when it comes, is followed by that great spectator experience: comeuppance.

Anne Wotana Kaye 1

October 19th, 2010 2:23pm Report this comment

Wily Trout: How's this for comeuppance - Odious Ob'Brien is forced to marry the depraved footman? A terrible punishment for him, although she might find it invigorating :=)

Adrian Sells

October 19th, 2010 2:26pm Report this comment

Oh, if only there was some prospect of villainy, comeuppance ... or drama in this drearily written tosh. Every character comes straight off the shelf, every minor line of plot is utterly predictable and what a waste of talent it is. I can't understand how Bonneville keeps a straight face as he delivers yet another little homily illustrating just how decent, worthy and enlightened a man Grantham is.
To make a comparison with Brideshead is outrageous; this is out of the same made-for-Sunday-evening drawer as the egregious Kingdom.

Anne Wotana Kaye 1

October 19th, 2010 3:54pm Report this comment

Adrian Sells
Please, Adrian, there is nobody whom one can compare to The One (Evelyn Waugh). But in the meantime, please remember there is no television drama worth watching, and at least Downton Abbey has wonderful actors and lovely sets. Kindly do not mock a harmless hour of correct diction and romantic dress.

eve main

November 3rd, 2010 1:51pm Report this comment

This is wonderful viewing for what would have been a dreary Sunday night. My family and I enjoy it very much and are sad that this weekend will see the last until next year year. Well done ITV for the screening this wonderful series..

Post comment