TV and Pink Lemonade: November 2012

Saturday 10 November 2012

Downton Abbey review: Series 3 Episode 8

“Shall I tell you how I look at it? Every man or woman who marries into this house, every child born into it, has to put their gifts at the family’s disposal. I’m a hard worker and I have some knowledge of the land. Matthew knows the law and the nature of business… You understand the responsibilities we owe to the people round here, those who work for the estate and those that don’t. It seems to me, if we could manage to pool all of that, if we each do what we can do, then Downton has a real chance.”

Was I the only one who heard lovely Branson saying that and immediately pictured him, Matthew and Robert as some sort of superhero team? Really, you didn’t? Just me? Oh, ok then.

And so the third series of Downton Abbey ended, not with a hugely dramatic event, but with a cricket match. A cricket match that symbolised unity and coming together and stuff (what? It’s a perfectly legitimate word to use – Lady Mary used it, so it must be). It felt like something that would have happened in the first series of Downton Abbey; in fact, this whole episode had the feeling of a first series episode, with its random character introduced to cause drama and the trivial event being treated like it’s the most important thing in the world while something horrible happens to someone else. Oh, and Bates saves the day through his saintliness.

The major drama this week continued on from last week, with Carson deciding what to do with Thomas. When he told poor Mr Barrow that he would be asked to leave with a full reference, you knew it wasn’t going to end there; after all, it was only two minutes into the episode. And indeed, O’Brien schemed and connived to convince James that if he didn’t protest further, people would think that he hadn’t objected to Thomas’s advances as much as he’d claimed. But then, pretty amazingly, Mrs Hughes revealed herself to be not really that bothered by what Thomas had done (“Do you think that Thomas is the first man of… that sort that I’ve ever come across?”) and protested James’s actions to Carson, while Bates also decided that he didn’t want Thomas to leave under such circumstances (no, I don’t know why, either) and pleaded his case to Robert. At which point we found out that Thomas’s secret wasn’t so much of a secret at all, and everyone decided to be surprisingly liberal about the whole thing in the way that only Downton Abbey characters can. Even more unfortunately for O’Brien, she forgot one crucial piece of information: Thomas knows about Her Ladyship’s soap, and allowed Bates to use that piece of information to blackmail O’Brien. It all got a bit wonky towards the end, with the Cricket Match of Unity being interrupted by a police visit, but the upshot is that, after all that drama, Thomas is staying at Downton and receiving a promotion. When Robert explained his decision, he basically should have just said, “I know, but now that I think about it, Rob James-Collier is totally totty and we don’t want to get rid of him.”

The other big event amongst the servants this week (apart from Bates and Anna getting a house and being all soppy in it, which is something it’s probably best we all try and forget) was Violet and her efforts to find Ethel a new job. And she got a new job, which will be near Charlie who she can see, and that’s all grand and lovely, and I’m sure she’ll be much happier there. But really, the best thing about the twist in this storyline was that it brought to the fore one of my favourite elements of early Downton, which has been a little neglected in recent times: Isobel vs. Violet. Julian Fellowes is never better than he is when he’s writing for these two strong women going up against each other, and Maggie Smith and Penelope Wilton always play it to perfection: my favourite was Isobel chiding Lady Rose for saying that her father worked as hard as a slave, and Violet dryly saying, “Cousin Isobel is very literal” like she honestly couldn’t think of a worse insult.

Up amongst the toffs, Mary and Cora kept sharing significant looks and whispered conversations about doctors, which could only mean one thing: Mary was pregnant. Or so I thought; as it turned out, it could only mean one of two things, that Mary was pregnant or that she’d been to a doctor and had a wee operation so she could become pregnant. That’s right, it turns out the lack of Crawley baby isn’t Matthew’s fault at all, but Mary’s! Who’d have thought it, eh? Still, nobody plays “reserved exterior with tenderness underneath” like Michelle Dockery, and this episode allowed her to do a lot of that. Not that I’m complaining, and it's nice to see those crazy kids be happy for a change.

We were also introduced to Lady Rose, a great-niece of Violet, who didn’t really serve much purpose beyond going back to London, then running away to be with her married boyfriend in a smoky nightclub, thus forcing Edith, Matthew and Rosamund to go there to find her. It seemed like a strange decision to introduce a new character in the last episode and have her dominate proceedings so much, but I’m guessing we’ll see more of her in the Christmas special, and Lily James did bring a great energy to the role.

The other big London news was Edith and her newspaper column. I guess the main thing I should be talking about is the fact that her editor flirted with her, so she called up the Daily Telegraph office to find out what she could about him (the Google of its day) and discovered that, oops, he’s married. But, in a totally original set of events that does not seem at all familiar (*cough* Jane Eyre *cough*) his wife is crazy and he can’t divorce her. But what I really want to talk about is Edith’s AMAZING Journalist Girl clothing and how happy it made me. First she wore a sort of peach blouse thing that had a grey stripe on it that looked like a tie, and I thought I couldn’t love her more. But THEN she brought out a sexy little TEAL BERET and it was so delicious I actually could have died, and I realised that what I had felt for her peach and grey shirt was but puppy love compared to my feelings for her TEAL BERET. Well played, Lady Edith, well played.

And all this brought us to the final Cricket Match of Unity, where everything became all lovey and rosy and everyone smiled and was happy: Molesley got to play cricket for the Big House, even if he did get bowled for a duck (WHAT, I KNOW SOME CRICKET THINGS); Thomas got to stay at Downton; Mary got to think about making babies with Matthew; Cora got Tom to agree that he and Baby Sybbie should stay at the Abbey; and Matthew and Tom got Robert to agree to go with them on their plans for the improvement of the estate. And this all happened while the men wore cricket whites, so my knitwear fixation and I could not have been happier with the end of this series.

Sunday 4 November 2012

Downton Abbey review: Series 3 Episode 7

“Human nature is a funny business, isn’t it?”

“Now, why didn’t the poets come to you, Mr Carson? They’d have saved themselves a lot of time and trouble.”

Can we have an episode of Downton Abbey that just follows Mrs Hughes around as she makes amazing sarcastic comments to everyone? Please, Mr Fellowes, can we?

Much of the drama this week was concentrated in the servants’ quarters, starting with the return of Bates from prison after Anna Marple managed finally to get him freed. I’ll admit I was glad to see him return, if only because it meant the end of the deathly dull prison scenes. Slightly surprisingly, not much else remarkable happened to the Mr and Mrs Bates following his return; he basically just spent the rest of the episode sitting at the servants’ table and looking at cottages with Anna. My goodness, I’m sure this is the kind of stuff he dreamed of being able to do again when he was in prison, isn’t it?

In fact, the biggest impact the return of Mr Bates had was on Thomas. Despite apparently being some sort of evil genius (ha), Thomas, I mean Mr Barrow, hadn’t twigged that Bates would want his old job back, and that Lord Grantham would want him to have it. Unfortunately for Thomas, he played right into their hands by falling for O’Brien’s schemes; he knows she hates him, and coming onto another man without being certain of your reception would have been a very risky thing to do. Doing it on the word of your former-ally-now-sworn-enemy seems foolish, even for Thomas. Mind you, he did steal Lord Grantham’s dog to try and get revenge on him for something (oh, Downton Abbey), so maybe not. With Carson now in the know, things could get very hairy for Mr Barrow before the series is out. Although I have to say, Evil O’Brien is my favourite O’Brien of all, and it was amazing to see her back at full force.

Getting caught up in all this were Jimmy and Alfred, who are still caught up in a love shape (of varying degrees of sides, depending on how Julian Fellowes is feeling that day). Daisy seemed not to care so much this week, so it was left to Alfred to try and woo Ivy by taking her to the pictures to see a film about a “wronged woman who survives in the wilderness through her own wits and courage.” (“Blimey, they’ve stolen my story!” – O’Brien) Unfortunately, she’s still hung up on Jimmy and his pretty, pretty face, so she’s not interested. Poor Alfred, just go for Daisy instead; she’s only aged about five minutes in the last eight or nine years, so she’s a pretty good bet, and she’s totally going to inherit a farm, she’s a better catch than rouge-wearing Ivy (whore) any day. Speaking of which, Ethel’s sordid past is still causing problems for Isobel, and Violet decides that it’s her job to sort things out. To be fair, Violet is basically right here, even if she goes about it in a rather underhand manner; the most telling line of the whole storyline was Violet starkly asking Isobel, “And is poor Ethel to be the cudgel by which you fight your foes?”

Up amongst the toffs, things developed in basically the way we all expected them to. Matthew continues to try and save the estate, despite the best efforts of Robert and estate manager Jarvis (who we’ve literally never seen before, but who is somehow really important all the same) to resist his changes. Nobody does exasperated-at-the-clueless-world-around-him quite like Dan Stevens, so this storyline has suited him down to the ground. While I still wish lovely Lady Sybil was still alive (sob), I have to admit Allen Leech has really come into his own as Tom Branson over the last couple of episodes. I loved the scene with Tom’s brother in the kitchen, not for Tom’s brother himself, but for the way he forced Tom to be all amazing and commanding (“My mother-in-law has been kind enough to invite you to stay and dine, and I’ll not let you snub her.”) They overplayed the “crass brother” hand a tad (Living above a garage! A park nearby! Drinking BEER!) but it worked well enough in forcing them to accept Tom back into the fold. The scene in which Violet suggested that they give the estate manager job to Tom was a masterclass in “exposition acting” from Maggie Smith; thankfully, even if the solution was obvious, it's a neat one that allows Branson to stay at Downton and has plenty of scope for drama in the future.

For me, though, some of the best moments of the episode came from the two remaining Crawley sisters. Mary was back to being all aristocratic and sophisticated and right, and it reminded me how much I missed that side of her. Her scene with Tom in the nursery was one of my favourite of the night, because it was so in character and quiet and sweet; Michelle Dockery delivered the line “Please give them a chance to behave properly” to perfection. I also just loved Edith’s storyline, simply because she actually got one and I love it when Laura Carmichael actually gets to do things. Her editor friend (who doesn’t look at all like a younger version of the man who jilted her at the altar, nope, definitely not) was charming enough, and I loved her jaunty little hat and coat trimmed with the same jaunty material. Perhaps the best moment of the whole episode was seeing Edith’s delight at her grandmother defending her decision to consider the offer from the editor, then her quiet deflation as Violet swiftly burst her bubble, “And another thing, Edith isn’t getting any younger. Perhaps she isn’t cut out for domestic life.” Poor Edith, nothing ever goes really right for her, does it?

And baby Sybil has finally been christened, and she’s a Catholic. The final scene, with all the ladies in their muted shades of lilac, and them all rallying round Tom, was just lovely. As long as it doesn’t end Tom and Cora’s amazing streak of guilting Robert into doing things by saying “it’s what Sybil would have wanted”. They’re both becoming real experts at it, and it would be a shame to waste such a valuable skill.