Downton Abbey, episode 8, review - lots of spoilers!!!

The Telegraph

Ceri Radford reviews the final episode of ITV1's period drama, Downton Abbey.

3.5

Not so happily ever after: Joanne Froggatt as Anna and Brendan Coyle as Bates in the ITV1 period drama Downton Abbey. Photo: ITV

By Ceri Radford

10:20PM GMT 06 Nov 2011

 

Bring out the black armbands. Last night, Downton Abbey (ITV1) was a house in mourning, and now the whole nation can wallow in gloom. The second series is no more; a light has gone out from the Sunday night TV schedules. Though never a flawless creation like the late and saintly Miss Lavinia Swire (Zoe Boyle), it will be sorely missed.

More so than in any episode of the series, last night’s instalment was a mixed bag of the sublime, and the sublimely silly. Last week had seen the chocolate box fantasy of Matthew Crawley (Dan Stevens), heir to the Downton estate, war hero and hunk, rising from his wheelchair and realising that he wasn’t in fact crippled for life. But the finale topped that by having Lavinia die not just of the Spanish flu but of a broken heart. Matthew concluded as such after his sweet, stricken fiancée gasped that it was for the best for her to perish so that he could be happy (i.e. marry Lady Mary), then duly expired, like a martyred chipmunk. This was pure schmaltz, as well as a remarkably magnanimous reaction for a girl who had got up off her sickbed to find the love of her life canoodling with another woman just days before their wedding.

The “will they, won’t they?” relationship between Matthew and Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) may have been pushed to farcical extremes over Downton’s two series, with misunderstandings, rebuffs, love rivals, a threatened inheritance and even a threatened manhood all entering the fray, but it nevertheless remained the emotional core of the drama. It says something for the strength of the acting that you still cared that – sniff – they might never be together, even while sniggering at the outlandish obstacles to their union. Dockery deserves credit for her loveable portrayal of a prickly character, who is part, in the apt words of housekeeper Mrs Hughes (Phyllis Logan), an “uppity minx and the author of her own misfortune”, and part an acid-tongued superwoman who would do a far better job of running the family estate than her beleaguered, maid-bothering father. You have to wonder, though, how far the writer, Julian Fellowes, can spin the suspense out. Will Mary and Matthew be dithering under the mistletoe for the Christmas special? Can their lingering glances really be strung out across the third series?

Another relationship, at least, went off on the right track: Lady Sybil Crawley (Jessica Brown-Findlay), finally showing some bite, announced that she was eloping with the chauffeur, and even won her father’s blessing. This touchingly tied up one plotline, although it didn’t solve the mystery of what the toothsome Sybil saw in Tom Branson (Allen Leech), a grindingly self-righteous dullard whose idea of a chat-up line was to inform her that the Bolsheviks had executed the Russian Imperial family.

Below stairs, the ongoing saga of Mr Bates the valet (Brendan Coyle) and Anna the housemaid (Joanne Froggatt) reached giddy new heights of melodrama. No sooner had they consummated their marriage (the unnecessary image of a pale, post-coital Mr Bates is burned irrevocably onto my retinas), than disaster struck. The portly paramour was arrested for murder, declaring his love for Anna even as the cuffs were snapped onto his wrists. It made for a cringe-inducing final scene, but the very last moment was beautifully played: a tremor of emotion flickered across Anna’s poised, placid face as she finally lost control. This summed up the contradictions of the second series, where fine writing and fine acting were mixed in with all the froth of a swimming pool full of cappuccino churned by wildebeest.

For every clunky line (the Earl of Grantham telling a housemaid that he desired her “with every fibre of my being”), there was a killer (Lady Mary archly asking her fiancé to drive the car over the chauffeur). If the second series fell short of the first, at least it was missing a high standard. Such was the intricate plotting and the warm, deft characterisation that, even after 18.5 hours of Downton, I was left wanting more: more Lady Mary; more of the heroically hidebound Carson (Jim Carter); and above all, more of Violet, the Dowager Countess (Maggie Smith).

Throughout both series, Fellowes has given her the best lines. “Don’t be defeatist dear, it’s very middle-class,” she upbraided one granddaughter last night. It wasn’t just the words, though: some alchemy between Smith and Fellowes has produced a priceless character who can make you laugh with the mere expression on her pursed face as she peers incredulously at a gramophone.