Many Abbey Returns

Wednesday 17 August 2011

It stole our hearts and minds last year with its well-observed drawing room and below stairs drama, and now Downton Abbey is set to return for a second series this autumn. Alan Corr looks at a show which re-awakened our passion for period drama and previews the new season which promises a whole new set of characters

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Cheer up! It'll all be over by Christmas

Nobody can resist a good period drama - the big house and a bigger cast, the exquisite detail of the clothes, the quaint manners and the quainter social pecking order. And no period drama since we swooned over Brideshead Revisited has caught viewers' imagination quite like Downton Abbey. Last year, the first season fetched unheard of viewing figures of 12 million in the UK and with ratings like that, it's no surprise that it's set to return to UTV this autumn.
We are ushered back into this rarefied aristocratic Edwardian world at the height of The Great War. The social hierarchy is about to change utterly and the still, ordered world of Downton is plunged into near chaos with the upheavals all around. It is a setting ripe with even more dramatic possibility.
"The heart of the second series is how everyone from Daisy to Robert copes with the country being at war", says series creator Julian Fellowes. "Robert says, 'War is now reaching its long fingers into Downton, scattering our chicks'. None of them is unaffected by the war. All of them change. And death does not entirely pass Downton Abbey by. At the end, people are nervously seeing how much of their previous lives can carry on - it's like they're pressing parts of their body to see where they have been bruised."
In fact, it is impossible to remain unaffected by the war unless, of course, you're Lady Violet, the Dowager Countess of Grantham who cleaves to the old ways with almost heroic ignorance. Fellowes is quick to emphasise that the fighting on the frontline is only a backdrop "Of course, you have to go to the front - it would be a cheat if you didn't, and you have to be very much aware of what the soldiers are going through. But I wanted to focus on what was happening back home."
Downton (a repeat of series one ended on TV3 recently) returns with all the regular faces including Dame Maggie Smith, Hugh Bonneville, Elizabeth McGovern, Brendan Coyle, Joanne Froggatt and Dan Stevens, but there are some new faces joining the cast too, including the always impressive Maria Doyle Kennedy and Iain Glen.
"I think one of the reasons for the success of Downton Abbey is that although it is set in the past, it has a modern structure", says Fellowes. "It is very fast paced and has lots of different stories running simultaneously, and you have to keep alert. In the old days, it didn't matter if a viewer went out in the middle of a show to make a cup of tea. But you can't do that with Downton Abbey - you might miss the whole reason why Daisy bought a hat! The show has an energy that makes it very watchable."
One thing we can be sure of, this means Waugh!
Here's a look at those new cast members:

Lavinia Swire (Zoe Boyle)
Lavinia is the only daughter of a London solicitor, Reggie Swire, who has built up a practice and made himself a rich man. Her mother is long dead and so father and daughter have grown very close in their large and comfortable house in one of Nash's terraces overlooking Regent's Park. She is essentially a London girl but she loves Matthew fiercely and she would do whatever it takes to make him happy, if it is within her power.

Vera Bates (Maria Doyle Kennedy)
Vera Bates has an axe to grind. A childhood sweetheart of Bates from home, life and a bitterly mismatched marriage have changed her. The change is not becoming and if there is one thing above all that she finds she cannot tolerate, it is the thought of her husband being happy, and happy with someone else. This cannot and, as far as she is concerned, will not be allowed to happen.

Sir Richard Carlisle (Iain Glen)
Richard Carlisle belongs to the new society that was expanding from the end of the 19th-Century. He has made his money as a powerful and ruthless newspaper proprietor, and while it suits him to let Mary think she can control him, she is quite wrong. The aristocracy may still be powerful enough for Carlisle to ape their manners and their houses and their clothes, but he does not feel the need to defer to them and he is happy to crush them if the moment calls for it. The Crawleys are under the illusion they can patronise him but they are severely mistaken, as they learn to their cost.
cal

Andrew Lang (Cal Macaninch)
Lang is a member of the walking wounded, of whom there were so many, a fact that was concealed from Carson and Robert Grantham when they employed him, only for it to become abundantly clear in a disturbingly public fashion. But if Lang's condition is a disappointment, it provokes an unlikely character into becoming his champion.
Amy

Ethel Parks (Amy Nuttall)
Ethel is more interested in the future than the past. She is not unhappy to be working at Downton - it's a big step up from her last place - but, as far as she's concerned, the story won't end there. She has big plans and they stretch far beyond the life of an under-housemaid from a northern village. She wants a life that takes her somewhere worth going. And why not? She's bright. She's pretty. Unfortunately, when you're not looking, those same qualities can get you into trouble. And when Downton becomes a home for wounded officers, that trouble is suddenly a very real possibility