Not even a late, lavish cocktail party could save this episode, and the plot-based deja vu is becoming exhausting for regular viewers
SPOILER ALERT: This blog is for people watching Downton Abbey series five. Dont read on if you havent seen series five, episode five.
Read Viv Groskops episode four blog here.
Continue reading...This was a good perhaps even very good episode, with romance, relationships exposed and even some potential for plot resolution
SPOILER ALERT: This blog is for people watching Downton Abbey series five. Dont read on if you havent seen series five, episode six.
Read Viv Groskops episode five blog here.
Continue reading...There was a lot of action in this penultimate episode, but one storyline dominates the dog has cancer and may not be long for this world
Isis in crisis: is Downton Abbeys best character about to die?
I know a lot happened in this episode but really it was all about one thing: Isis has cancer. No! Not Isis! Take anyone. Take Cousin Violet. Take Daisy. To hell with it, take Molesley (still my favourite). But do not take Isis. As suspected, her canine voyeurism has poisoned her from within and now the only thing standing between her and the afterlife is a cashmere travel blanket.
I am weeping far too much to point out the anachronisms both behavioural and verbal that piled up during this outing. OK, Im not. Would the Earl of Grantham use the word cancer and not a euphemism in front of a large gathering of people? I wasnt convinced either that Cora would be quite so relaxed about welcoming the illegitimate impostor child into the Downton nursery. I know shes a a kerrazy American and all that but this was a stretch. (As the Earl of Grantham put it: If you ask me, its absolutely crackers.) And dont get me started on Mary saying to Granny, as if this were The Jerry Springer Show: You have to be bigger than that.
Continue reading...What with the inevitable doggy demise and Annas run-in with the law, this feature-length final episode was, even by this shows standards, pretty odd. Roll on series six!
Downton Abbey gets a sixth series
SPOILER ALERT: This blog is for people watching Downton Abbey series five. Dont read on if you havent seen series five, episode eight.
Read Viv Groskops episode seven blog here.
Continue reading...Beautifully shot and wonderfully acted, yet all a bit too overcomplicated and drawn out. It must be the Downton Christmas special!
The labrador’s backside is back for Christmas. And let’s hope it’s not just for Christmas, eh? Actually, my Christmas wish would be that it is just for Christmas. Because if this convoluted outing proved anything, it’s that this series has outstayed its welcome. Unlike Isis the dog, whose absence in this Christmas special finally disproved the conspiracy theory that she was just absent from the last episode to tease us. Sorry, people, but Isis really is dead.
As always this was a beautifully made and wonderfully acted confection showcasing all the shortcomings of the Downton Abbey brand. In the opening sequences, it felt as if the actors had been directed to speak the dialogue slowly and carefully in order to help viewers a) worse for the cooking sherry and b) unfamiliar with Downton (as probably many Christmas-only viewers were – lucky them). There was a lot of signposting of characters and history, which only served to flag up that there are often far too many people involved and far too many things going on.
Continue reading...Mrs Patmore has a frank conversation with Mr Carson, the mystery of the murdered valet is finally solved, and Daisy strikes a blow for workers’ rights
SPOILER ALERT: This blog is for people watching Downton Abbey series six. Don’t read on if you haven’t seen series six, episode one.
Break out the Veuve Clicquot from the coolest part of the cellar! Isis’s backside is back! It’s typically Downton that they will never change the credits, not even out of respect for the dead. Poor Isis. Gone. But her backside never to be forgotten.
Continue reading...Mr Drewe’s pigs? Daisy’s Corbynesque awakening? Lady Mary becoming the agent? If these are the storylines that are supposed to be keeping us entertained in Downton’s final stretch, we’re in trouble
Catch up on series six, episode one here
SPOILER ALERT: This blog is for people watching Downton Abbey series six. Don’t read on if you haven’t seen series six, episode two.
Oh, for heaven’s sake, I think I might start listening to The Archers. I came into this series with an open mind, impressed by the quality of the trailers and the general air of things having improved. I even began to think that not only would this series perhaps equal the quality of series one, I wondered if a miracle might happen and it might even surpass it. After two outings now, frankly, I think you would get more entertainment out of Mr Drewe’s pigs, whether you were a prime minister or not.
“You’re married and that means you never have to cry alone again … Have you ever thought about adoption?”
“You are tribal, Mr Bates …”
“We made a plan. But we forgot about emotion. And emotion’s what can trip you up every time.”
Continue reading...Charles and Elsie’s big day is almost as underwhelming as Cousin Violet and Cousin Isobel’s war over the hospital. But there’s hope for Edith at last – a man who can make coffee!
SPOILER ALERT: This blog is for people watching Downton Abbey series six. Don’t read on if you haven’t seen series six, episode three.
If in doubt, chuck everything in Mrs Patmore’s mixing bowl and give it a good stir. Poach the peaches in brandy and hide the convict in the potting shed! Sack the editor! Bring in the fancyman! Make Anna pregnant! Bring Branson back from America! Surely this paves the way for a Branson-Lady Mary romance, which we will have to pretend isn’t weird. (Seeing as he is her dead sister’s widower.)
Thomas returns to the dark side of butlering, Sgt Willis is kept busy and Cousin Violet fights hard to resist centralised government
SPOILER ALERT: This blog is for people watching Downton Abbey series six. Don’t read on if you haven’t seen series six, episode four.
Thomas is the butler! At last! Now for some fun! And Harriet Walter! And she’s being set up against Miss Moneypenny! Hooray! Ah, at least there was some entertainment to be had here. For a few moments at a time at least.
“Mary needs more than a handsome smile and a hand on a gear stick.”
“I’m surprised you know what a gear stick is.”
Continue reading...Lord Grantham’s mystery illness comes to the fore, Carson has a personality transplant and Branson and Lady Mary discuss the past
SPOILER ALERT: This blog is for people watching Downton Abbey series six. Don’t read on if you haven’t seen series six, episode five.
Oh, for heaven’s sake, this programme is so totally bonkers. I have never seen Carrie, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Return of the Living Dead. But now I don’t feel like I need to see any of those things. Because I’ve seen this. And I can never unsee it.
Related: Did we need Downton Abbey's 'shocking and bloody' warning?
Continue reading...The state rooms are thrown open to the public as Downton chucks out some potentially interesting storylines to make sure the Groundhog Day effect keeps happening. And happening
Roll up, roll up for the televisual equivalent of the fat lady in the circus! It’s a rare opportunity to view the state rooms of Downton Abbey! And it’s a not-so-rare opportunity to see 56 million characters and 187 gazillion different plotlines all in one, jam-packed, chaotic hour. Someone please wake me up when it’s all over.
Only two episodes to go.
Related: Did we need Downton Abbey's 'shocking and bloody' warning?
Continue reading...There’s excitement with a blazing car, thrills in Mrs Patmore’s organic B&B and a proposal for Edith at last. But with only one episode to go before the Christmas finale, how are we going to wrap everything up in time?
Oh my fellow sufferers of this living nightmare from which there is no waking … I must confess a terrible thing. I think I may have actually enjoyed this episode. I know. It’s extraordinary. I can’t be sure, as I haven’t enjoyed Downton for so long that I’ve forgotten what it feels like. But I think it was enjoyment. It was, at the very least, a tingle.
The trouble is, I have been rendered utterly demented by events of the past five and three quarter series and I have quite lost all my faculties. I wept copiously at numerous points. The blazing car that could have contained Henry but did not in the end! Bates urging Anna not to rush to the blazing car in her precarious condition! Andy confessing his illiteracy and trying to say “Tsar Nicholas”! Edith getting a proposal from someone who is actually a nice person and hopefully not going to die! Molesley being cleverer than everyone from Oxford and Cambridge put together! A new baby Isis! It feels like the actors are pulling out every trick in the bag to make it through to the bitter end. They are greatly to be admired.
Barrow: “What have we here? Can anyone join in?”
Carson: “No, Mr Barrow, they cannot.”
Continue reading...You wait six years for an excellent episode to come along and suddenly there it actually is, with a feature-length instalment full of love, showdowns and, yes, still a few crazy subplots
SPOILER ALERT: This blog is for people watching Downton Abbey series six. Don’t read on if you haven’t seen series six, episode eight.
Read Viv Groskop’s episode seven blog here.
Continue reading...A warm Christmas send-off for the Crawleys and all those who work for them – but who has won the last-ever Golden Eyebrow of the week?
Well, as Christmas specials of old favourites go, it wasn’t at all bad. This was a Quality Street offering: predictable, reliable, with something sweet for everyone. But somehow not quite as special as you’d hoped. Was I wrong to hold out for a ghost at the feast? There was at least a memory of Cousin’s Matthew’s infamous tingle when Iron-Deficient Anaemia Man referenced his symptoms. (How I love it when Uncle Julian Googles medieval ailments.) But any mention of anything interesting or juicy was annoyingly shortlived.
Still, no one can complain about happiness at last for Edith – despite the spectre of The Now-Invisible Imposter Child. Thomas got a happy ending, too. Even if it was slightly at Carson’s expense. In fact, virtually every single character got a happy ending, with heavy-handed hints at future relationships from Branson (with Bouquet-Catching Lady) and Cousin Isobel (with Iron-Deficient Anaemia Man) to Mr Mason (with Mrs Patmore) and Mr Molesley (with Baxter). Anna had a baby and Mary had the promise of one. And there was even the unlikely suggestion that Robert and Cora won’t be needing marriage guidance counselling after all. (Personally, I doubt it will last.)
Continue reading...I said he would kill again. And he has. But what an anti-climax! And what a waste of mini-Den. I have calculated that they contracted him for 7.4 minutes of screen time for this entire series. Ah well, at least he made a big splash before he got pushed under the charabanc.
So what's the story from now on? Who is Lady Mary going to marry? Do we even care? Did Bates definitely kill and will he tell Anna? Has Alfred's mother really gone to live in Crewe? And is the suddenly important, potential future aristo-baby-owning pig man all he seems?
Continue reading...Mrs Hughes summed it up early doors: "We're all tired. But not as tired as we're going to be." This episode was available ahead of Christmas, embargoed, on preview. Reviewers were asked not to reveal "what happens in the last scene with Mr Carson and Mrs Hughes." What happens? What happens? This is what happens: Carson rolls his trousers up one and a half inches, they get their feet wet in the sea and (gasp) hold hands.
Oh for goodness sake, Uncle Julian, is this what you make us hold out four series for? A glimpse of Carson's ankles? (They are quite sexy. And intriguingly hairless.) I expected at least one wedding, possibly four. Have you not read Jane Austen? Or are we supposed to think that now that Carson and Mrs Hughes have held hands and done some paddling that they are, in fact, married and going to have a little baby?
Continue reading...It’s vintage Downtown as we return to the Abbey in 1924: Hi-de-Hi! meets The Towering Inferno anyone?
SPOILER ALERT: This blog is for people watching Downton Abbey series five. Don’t read on if you haven’t seen series five, episode one.
Oh lawks. Here we go again. The labrador’s backside is back. And with it a whole load of other upstairs-downstairs shenanigans, from the enjoyably, camply good to the downright bonkers-implausibly awful. Book-ended by that comforting opening shot of Isis’s ample, aristocratic flanks and a closing glimpse of Richard E Grant’s ample, aristocratic forehead, we entered series five with an episode that was vintage Downton. With all the desperate slapstick of Hi-de-Hi! interspersed with the screeching melodrama of The Towering Inferno, I have to admit that this week’s return offering was actually pretty good.
Continue reading...Sigh … what a dismally dull affair this was. Do the producers really think the appearance of a toaster constitutes plot development? We need a wedding – and fast
SPOILER ALERT: This blog is for people watching Downton Abbey series five. Don’t read on if you haven’t seen series five, episode two.
Read Viv Groskop’s episode one blog here.
The plot is still all over the place – but the weird Russians and a splendid turn from Spratt kept things bubbling along
SPOILER ALERT: This blog is for people watching Downton Abbey series five. Don’t read on if you haven’t seen series five, episode three.
Read Viv Groskop’s episode two blog here.
Continue reading...We’re halfway through the series, so let’s celebrate with what must be the most hideous moment in the history of Downton, and possibly the English language
SPOILER ALERT: This blog is for people watching Downton Abbey series five. Don’t read on if you haven’t seen series five, episode four.
Read Viv Groskop’s episode three blog here.
Continue reading...