Downton Abbey goes global (The National)

By Ben East

Downton Abbey is broadcast in more than 100 countries across the world (the most recent being the Czech Republic), but it's the Americans who have truly taken the series to their hearts. The season two premiere last week attracted 4.2 million live viewers to the public service broadcaster PBS, and many more are thought to have recorded it. This is double the network's usual prime-time average, and far greater than prestigious shows chronicling more familiar American lives, such as Mad Men. American publishers, reported TheNew York Times, are rushing to re-release books about Edwardian England that mirror the setting of the show, from investigations into British aristocracy to the lives of maids.

Such Downton fever was stoked by gushing reviews. "It's a smart, seductive soap opera wrapped in Valentine ribbons," purred the Los Angeles Times. "It is big, beautiful, beautifully acted and romantic, its passions expressed with that particular British reserve that serves only to make them burn brighter.""

And, perhaps, that's why Downton hasn't just been popular in the US, but elsewhere too. Sure, there's enjoyment in escaping into archetypal but distant worlds - just as British people might like to watch a Western - but there's more to this than simple reverie for another time. Fellowes's desire to create good television is part of a grand tradition of British period drama. The relationships in these shows, going right back to the likes of Brideshead Revisited and Upstairs, Downstairs, are brilliantly depicted by actors who know the genre inside out. The likes of Dame Maggie Smith (who has won an Emmy for her performance in Downton) or, indeed, Colin Firth in The King's Speech, make these undertakings feel like classically austere, appointment-to-view programming.

But not too classic. At the Golden Globes, the actor Hugh Bonneville, who plays Robert Crawley, the Earl of Grantham in Downton Abbey, attributed its popularity to the fact it's not based on a famous novel. "People tend to love period dramas, but this is one where you don't know the ending, it's not like an adaptation of a book," he said.

All of which will make Fellowes's next undertaking a little more tricky. It's a mini series about the Titanic. And we all know how that one ended.

artslife@thenational.ae

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