Simon Schama holds a place of honor in our home. Preparing for a trip to London in 2005, we watched his video series “A History of Britain,” over the course of several weeks. Our boys loved it so much that they would chant “Britain! Britain!” after dinner. His history of the French Revolution, Citizens, was masterful.
So it’s with the greatest respect that I disagree with him about Downton Abbey, the first television series to keep my interest since, well, The Sopranos.
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Schama thinks he detects the “clammy delirium” of nostalgia in the Tea Party’s “ache for a tricorny country,” “radio ranters” selling Americans on a false paradise of pre–Social Security and Medicare America, and now viewers racing to their TV sets on Sunday nights to catch Downton Abbey, — a “steaming, silvered tureen of snobbery.”
Americans, Schama scolds, “desperate for something, anything, to take [their] mind off the perplexities of the present” are gobbling up this newest Edwardian-era story because of our secret longing to be members of a defunct aristocracy.
Who is being the snob here? Schama, an Englishman, proposes to elevate our taste. The series irritates him because he still recalls the sting of being “put in his place” by the “toffs” in the 1950s and 1960s. We credulous Americans are too easily swept off our feet, he protests, by these country-house tales.
Oh please. There were similar complaints in the 1970s — before the era of talk radio or the Tea Party — when Americans were swept up in Upstairs, Downstairs fever. The critics, then as now quick to suspect class-consciousness in the American psyche, assumed that viewers loved the series because it fulfilled fantasies of living the coddled life of the upper class, with scads of disposable servants warming the bed sheets, polishing the brass, and ironing the lace.
Not really. In Downton Abbey as in Upstairs, Downstairs some of the noblest characters are to be found below stairs. Bates, the earl’s valet, is partially lame from a wound sustained in the Boer War. He bears his disability — along with the cruelty of two of the other servants — with fortitude. His quiet integrity and long suffering seem to be rewarded by the love of a lady’s maid, Anna. But there are plot twists coming.
As Schama acknowledges, the series is “fabulously frocked and acted.” The sets are gorgeous, the actors stunning, the costumes dazzling, and the story captivating. It isn’t great literature. It’s melodrama, with clear villains and heroes, with boy meets girl, girl loses inheritance, girl loses boy, misunderstandings, sex scandals, blackmail, sibling rivalry, lost opportunities, jealousies, lies, flower shows, and war.
As far as the snobbish Mr. Schama is concerned, it take one to know one. He probably hates Mrs. Thatcher, too. Oh, and the relevant captcha is "fuddy-duddy!"
This series is a painful reminder of how far the British have fallen. A country that elevated civilization in the most successful countries in the world today (the US, Canada, Australia, India, China, etc.) is a shell of her former self. And this point in time, the begins of World War I, was the beginning of the end for the British Empire.
I think conservatives should treat Downton Abbey with great caution.
To me, it seems to demonise anything that is culturally authentic about the period, while celebrating a 21st century liberal outlook that is vested in all the show's "sympathetic" characters, no matter how anachronistic it is for them to express such views.
So we're expected to cheer a young female character who has a one-night-stand with a visiting ethnic-minority dignatory (and how often did that happen in the early 1900s?) and boo all the characters who might have a problem with such a turn of events. Unrealistic and preachy.
(In Los Angeles) Uh, no. "Lady" Mary's portrayal was unsympathetic throughout the first season, and even as her character is seeming to grow now, I don't expect her to win back Matthew Crawley's heart.
And chauffeur Branson, the one lefty in the bunch, has been shown as a fool so far, which can only satisfy the conservative point of view, don't you think?
The only demonizing on the show I've seen has been well earned by Thomas, O'Brien, and, to a lesser extent, by Mary and Edith with their snotty (yes, snotty, not snooty) behavior.
I applaud Mr. Fellowes, and the BBC, and the ultimate stage-craft of all the actors, for this extravagant piece. It's realistic enough for me and, well, next Sunday just can't come soon enough.
I don't see how the show makes us believe what Mary did was okay. It led her down the path of destroying the family's future. Her mother and grandmother were not ok with it, but know that it must me kept secret. But ultimately it wasn't the worst thing she could do. It was an innocent dalliance. She was naive and made an error in judgment.
I think the show gives us enough information so that we can make up our own minds about those characters.
I couldn't help suppressing a smile when Ms. Charen reminded her readers that the proper etiquette for an American, on meeting the Queen, is to shake her hand, as one equal to another, _not_ to bow or curtsey; I was reminded of the lambasting that Nancy Reagan--when she was First Lady of the U. S.--took from the journalistic Left for not curtseying before the Queen in the 1980s, when introduced to her at a public event. The biggest social snobs in this country are on the Left: look at the mystique of the Kennedys--even the name, "Camelot," accorded to the JFK administration by the fawning Left is redolent with aristocrat-envy--among the "progressive" elements of society. You won't find much of that among the Tea Party, I warrant.
What a fantastic series. My wife and I have thoroughly enjoyed Downton Abbey which is well acted and draws you in to feel compassion and interest in the characters and the time period. I liken this series to the movie King's Speech. Thanks for writing this.
LOL, maybe we specifically long for an aristrocracy where the grand lady of the manor is an American woman?
Ms. Charen's point that the servants are more popular with viewers than the aristos is completely correct and it completely undermines Schama's claim. [SPOILERS through season 2, episode 2]: Anna and Bates is the best story (and Anna is the show's most likeable character). Carson and William and Mrs. Patmore and Daisy are all interesting, and even O'Brien and Thomas are growing less unsympathetic. By comparison, the Crawley family stories are less compelling.
Downton Abbey is a good soap opera type story. Good writing, acting, and scenery. That's all. Our liking it doesn't reveal a secret desire to bring back the nobility any more than watching Breaking Bad reveals a hidden ambition to be a druglord.
In a companion piece of sorts Rich Lowry compares the Titanic (Edwardian England) with today's moral collapse aboard the Italian cruise liner that ran a ground a few days ago. The Titanic crew and captain made sure that every woman and child (regardless of class) made it to the lifeboats first. They used force if necessary. Hundreds of men (including the Titanic's captain and most of the crew) went down with the ship - a few of the men even changed into appropriate attire before doing so. In contrast, the captain and crew of the Italian ship pushed the passengers aside in order to save thier own skin. Many of the male passengers of the cruiseliner did the same. The contrast between Edwardian England and today stands out in high relief.
And, despite what Shama et als believe many Americans read English literature and watch thier film re-enactments not because of nostalgia for the aristocracy, but because they are fascinated with English culture and history. The BBC's version of Bleak House is a case in point. It was watched by millions of American viewers. And Bleak House doesn't always show Englishmen in a good light.
In my opinion, Downton Abbey is one of the best series to come out of the BBC in a long time. I like the fact that it is written by a conservative. Julian Fellowes portrays each character with both positive and negative attributes. There are no stereotypes of the war-mongering conservative, the victimized homosexual or the glorified freedom-fighting Socialist/Anarchist. (the 2nd and 3rd are quite unsympathetic). It's difficult for me to watch this and know that in just under 100 years, the once great British Empire, bound by centuries of honour, tradition and strength, is capitulating to the Sharia barbarians at the gate.
I agree with your appraisal. Just one correction: Downton Abbey is produced by ITV (another channel in the UK), not the BBC. In the UK, there is speculation that the show would be very different (much more left wing) if it were produced by the BBC.
Very true. Foyle's War, also currently airing on PBS is an excellent series and, on the whole, accurately depicting the WWII era with fine acting by Michael Kitchen in the starring role. It is produced by ITV but bears the earmarks of BBC's revisionist politically correct plots and outcomes that would have been totally foreign to my parents' generation who lived through the war very close to Hastings, the location of the story, and my father, by the way, was in the police during the war.
What's wrong with recognizing the virtues of aristocracy along with its foibles? Would that would do the same more often with the idiotic leveling impulses of democracy!
Downton Abbey provides an entertaining and balanced picture of a vanished era that certainly doesn't suffer by comparison with our so-called enlightened age. The characters are interesting and multifaceted--with even Thomas and O'Brien are beginning to display redeeming human qualities.
Like Ms. Charen, I too have admired the work of Mr. Schama, but am appalled at his stupid analysis of Downton Abbey and its popularity with Americans. With so much garbage on television these days, Downton Abbey shines, aristocratic presumptions not withstanding, by comparison!
A splendid story-telling experience is Downton Abbey. I agree 100% with Charen's piece. The show's timing and pace foretell the wrenching changes that will forever shatter a unique British way of life. No dumbed-down Americans are watching this series. But many of us boomers watch Downton Abbey with a chill up our spines. We recall our own more democratic, mannered citizenry, a kinder, gentler way of life, a less crazed celebrity culture. We are treated to a backward glance, yes. But many of us are holding our collective breath, if we are honest, as we try to imagine how our present world will succumb to the violent and twisted changes that are surely on the horizon.
Citizens was brilliant. So was A History of Britain. But Schama has grown a good deal more metropolitan snobbish lefty with age, and some of it was visible in his overly laboured visual metaphors [how many times did I need to see the Plantagenet dynasty's travails depicted as grim looking hawks launching themselves into a rainy English twilight from ruined medieval battlements?] and intermittently subversive narration in the latter work.
His take on the Tea Party is obviously hysterical. They [lefties] all assume that public spending control or adherence to constititional government is equivalent to leaving the peasants or the sick to starve in the gutter.
Now I sympathise on a certain theoretical level, since few of us in modern times are genuinely capable of being Randian creative supermen [most of those touting the Objectivist line in public fora have not demonstrated that capacity, and in all fairness neither have I nor most of the people I have ever met or am likely to], few of us are entirely up to the challenge of globalization unaided by public infrastructure, public order and public education, and few of us could afford to make these disparities good out of purely private resources regardless of how much debt we might be willing to take on and then repudiate. And I find as I get older that I cannot watch any historically themed show without dwelling on my own childhood and youth, my own intellectual and physical abilities or lack thereof, and the scope of my own interests and genuine capacities, and wondering what I would have found to do in the time period being depicted and how young an age I would have died at.
All that to say that the past had many less than pretty aspects for all not born to money or genuinely the sort who can rise from rags to riches and is never plagued by too much ill health. I would not care to revisit much of it.
But of course it is insane to actually believe as the left claims to do, that the tea party or any like movement aims to recreate that world in toto. It is to Schama's deep discredit that he seems to think this way.
Worse, what kind of educated person comes up with these tortured metaphors? I liked the hawks and his other filmed symbolism the first hundred times or so, but of what value are such phrases as "clammy delirium", "ache for a tricorny country", or "silvered tureen of snobbery"? Way to ham it up, doctor.
And of course tea partiers, even if they wished to entirely recreate the past, would be more likely to reproduce a jeffersonian republic than a defunct British country house aristocracy. Schama's worldview is much more like the latter than that of any tea partier.
I love Downton Abbey! So lovely to see an intelligent drama where the characters don't use profanity in lieu of punctuation, roll double entendres at every opportunity, have graphically-portrayed sexual encounters in every episode, etc. Beautiful costumes, graceful conduct, aspirations to noble character, kindness and courtesy... great story-telling. What's NOT to like about this series???
I believe America's continuing love of British culture, so beautifully drawn in Downton Abbey, is complex. We do seem to have a guilty (closet?) fascination with the British class system. We can't honestly claim to have made a wholesale rejection of the system, but neither have we embraced it. There are elements of it we have certainly aspired to. Even someone as self-professedly democratic as Thomas Jefferson managed to live by and large like an English lord, as much after the Revolution as before, if not more so). Especially in my section of the country, the Southeast, while we may rankle at the idea of unapologetic inherited rank and title, we still defer to people from "good families" and we still want to know "who your people are." But I think even more compelling are the higher ideals and Christian virtues that we inherited from the British class system: honor, manliness, intestinal fortitude, equanimity, good manners, magnanimity, a healthy conservatism, etc. and there is a healthy enough proportion of our population that mourns the fact that such virtues have become so debased in the West today. Downton Abbey is a soap opera, as some have stated, but I believe it can also be considered a tragedy, because while watching we understand more fully than the characters themselves that WWI is about to mark the end of the Empire and all the virtues it represents as they are about to rush precipitously and inexorably down the path of modernity. In this sense, DA is elegiac, a gotterdammerung. Yes, there is a certain degree of voyeuristic "peering over the fence" when watching a series such as this, but there is also something much deeper that draws American viewers.
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