Downton Abbey returns for third series.
The background
Bunting at the ready: Downton Abbey is back, and the word is that the third series is a return to form after the show’s disappointing second outing. Matthew Crawley has sufficiently recovered from his war wound and temporary zombification to marry Lady Mary; chauffeur-turned-son-in-law Branson popped up to give a fiery lecture on Irish independence at the dinner table after having his drink spiked; and the Earl of Grantham may have accidentally lost the entire Downton fortune. And in case that isn’t enough, Maggie Smith’s Dowager Countess now has a new sparring partner in the form of Shirley MacLaine, waltzing onto the screen as Cora’s mother.
A return to form
After a “rubbish” second series, “Downton is back on top form doing what it does best: making us guiltily yearn for the golden era of Them and Us,” wrote Kevin Watson in Metro. “This is top-class soap: Sunday nights are on hold for the next eight weeks.”
Entertainment for idiots?
Downton‘s return will be welcomed by those who found the BBC’s Parade’s End “too challenging”, snarked Sam Wollaston in The Guardian. “It’s seductive, because it’s so well done, but you never really get the sense that it’s going anywhere, or telling you anything.”
Predictable enjoyment
“This felt like a programme back to its best, the one we fell in love with back in 2010. The script was tight; the detail was there,” said Ben Lawrence in The Telegraph. We all know how the series will end, but that’s one of the joys of Downton: “One of Downton’s most lovable qualities is that it is predictable. Good will conquer evil, love will conquer hate, and the Dowager Countess will conquer her distaste for vulgar Americans. Well, maybe.”
Blissful nonsense
Ok, it’s hardly high-brow drama, wrote Andrew Billen in The Times (£); “yet which heart does not guiltily swell at the return of this blissfully undemanding nonsense — a dream of an England that never was, but which, as you watch, you feel need never end?”
