Dan Stevens is Matthew Crawley and Michelle Dockery is Lady Mary in "Downton Abbey," which begins its new season Sunday.
Downton Abbey: Season 2, "Masterpiece Classic." 9 p.m. Sundays, Jan. 8-Feb. 19 on PBS.How excited is PBS about the second season of its Emmy-winning "Downton Abbey"? So excited that even Laura Linney seems on the verge of breaking into uncharacteristic fits of giggles in her introduction to the "Masterpiece Classic" miniseries starting Sunday night.
For the most part, the excitement is justified. And it says a lot about how well the characters are drawn and how much affection we feel for them that despite the fact that writer-creator Julian Fellowes allows the series to wobble off the rails a few episodes in, we still react with warmth and perhaps even a few tears for these dear people.
Actually, the first two or three episodes of the new season are magnificent and even better than all of the first year of the Emmy-winning show. The story of the Crawley family of minor nobles, trying to cope with the archaic law that restricts who may inherit the family manse and title, continues with the outbreak of the First World War in the opening episode.
Despite the family's initial reservations about the designated heir, cousin Matthew Crawley (Dan Stevens), they've accepted him into the family embrace. In fact, Mary (Michelle Dockery), the eldest of the three daughters of Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville), and his American-born wife, Cora (Elizabeth McGovern), embraced and embraced Matthew, but that relationship has fractured. As the second season begins, they are working on just being friends.
Both above and below stairs, the Crawleys and their staff try to keep things just as they were before the war broke out. Although "Downton" has an "Upstairs Downstairs" household structure, what links all the characters is a shared determination to survive whatever comes their way.
Noble Mr. Bates
The noble valet Mr. Bates (Brendan Coyle) and housemaid Anna (Joanne Froggatt) rely on their growing love to get them through. Before they can marry, however, Bates has to persuade his estranged but manipulative wife to grant him a divorce. Among the Crawleys themselves, Mary has to cope with her unresolved feelings for Matthew, especially when she learns he's engaged to someone else.
But by far the biggest challenge for both parts of the household is the war itself. Below stairs, Mr. Carson (Jim Carter) and Mrs. Hughes (Phyllis Logan) try to keep the household operating despite food shortages and having to lose some staff members to the Army. Upstairs, the Crawleys and Matthew's do-gooder mother, Isobel (Penelope Wilton), have to adjust to their home being turned into a hospital for wounded officers. Isobel relishes the notion of being in charge of the officers' care, but the military itself, not to mention Lady Cora, have other ideas about that.
By adding even more depth and nuance to the characters, Fellowes has not only made the early episodes of the second season absolutely gripping, but has also managed to keep our interest despite a noticeable shift midway through the new season. Plot twists and character shifts are tossed in rather randomly, almost as if Fellowes doesn't entirely trust his characters. No sooner has one character mentioned in passing that things might be better if another were dead than the second character buys the farm.
That's called telegraphing and it doesn't really belong in Fellowes' script. Perhaps the most egregious move is to have another character, presumed dead, suddenly turn up again, bandaged like Boris Karloff in "The Mummy," making him unrecognizable to the household. This is the kind of thing one would expect from a daytime soap opera.
3-D characters
Beyond our affection for the characters themselves, our attention is held firmly by how the characters have been written, though. Fellowes may stumble with some hokey plot points, but he has created all of these characters with care, detail and a determination to make them three-dimensional, even when they are nudged into less than credible situations.
For the most part, the performances are superb, with the slight exception of Jessica Brown Findlay as the Crawley's youngest daughter, Lady Sybil. As charming as she makes her character, Findlay isn't quite in the same league as Bonneville, McGovern, Wilton, Stevens, Logan, Carter, Froggatt and Coyle. Once again, however, the most delicious performance is effortlessly delivered by Maggie Smith as Robert's meddling mother. If there was a flaw in the first season, it was only that Smith wasn't given more screen time. She's much more in evidence in the second year to remind us of what great acting is all about.
Obviously, the entire "Downton" enterprise has been conceived and executed with a collective eye toward quality. But it's hardly the only "Masterpiece" offering made this well, so what is it that sets it apart, what is it that makes it arguably as good as "Upstairs Downstairs"? It's really rather simple: Almost all of these people are only trying to do their best in life, against all odds, large and small. We believe them, we identify with them and we care about them. The emotional authenticity of "Downton Abbey" continues to make it a classic.
E-mail David Wiegand at dwiegand@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page E - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/05/DDDE1MHBFQ.DTL#ixzz1iglXKb9e
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