Downton Abbey, episode 7, review (SPOILERS)

The Telegraph

Serena Davies reviews the seventh episode of ITV1's period drama, Downton Abbey

3.5

Sir Richard (Iain Glen) and Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) Photo: ITV

By Serena Davies

10:20PM GMT 30 Oct 2011

Tonight I discovered that Downton improves mightily after a couple of glasses of wine. Ok yes I guffawed along with the rest of you when Matthew suddenly stood up from his chair and REALISED HE COULD WALK. Please. Why didn’t Fellowes make him blind? It worked with Rochester, and there’s a hero for you. This way Matthew could have stayed blind and still had children and his love for whichever woman he finally chose could have been even more noble because he could no longer admire their sinuous frame. Rochester even got better under Jane Eyre’s tender loving care and it was a recovery that felt plausible as opposed to TOTALLY IDIOTIC.

But, other than when concerned with the central event of the episode, my emotions were near-perfectly in sync with what Julian Fellowes was hoping for. Particularly as regards the Grand Tragedy of Lady Mary.

Poor Mary, I can hardly bear it. I love the way she’s got all catty and imperious to cover the terrible pain of Matthew and Lavinia’s forthcoming nuptials, including her maudlin talk of our all having to make choices we must stick with (furtive glance at the dreadful Richard).

I loved the way she whipped Sybil away from the jumped-up chauffeur in their inn of (potential) sin, her voice getting several semitones deeper (and haughtier) as she told him – after Sybil’s departure – that yes, contrary to what she’d just said to her sister, she’d do her best to persuade her to forsake him.

But most of all I loved Maggie Smith’s visit to Matthew when she told him that Mary was still in love with him: had he not seen Mary's face when he announced his marriage to Lavinia? “Like Juliet’s when she awoke in the tomb.” Heartbreak.

Thankfully, Robert the Earl has indeed now embarked in a chaste sort of affair with the sweet maid, which meant he was quite a lot less Lord Dull than usual. And I must have been drunk because I found myself actually caring that the nasty Thomas had managed to lose all his money after being ripped off by the sly thief with whose wares Thomas had been hoping to launch himself on the black market.

Next week: the LAST episode, which the excellent Ceri Radford will be reviewing in the main paper and online. This series, for me, has slipped far too often into the ridiculous rather than the sublime, but a good bottle of Merlot can reverse that ratio quite effectively.