Review: A return to old ways at 'Downton Abbey' Last season seemed to be a bit over-plotted, but the household appears to be humming along again in its repressed, backbiting way. (LA TIMES)

By Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times Television Critic

January 5, 2013

"Downton Abbey," a period British TV series that has become an American obsession, is back Sunday night for its third season, in the framework of "Masterpiece: Classic." For the several millions who have waited months for its return, it is a day that has not come too soon; I am not unhappy to see it myself.

With its castle and costumes and superior production values — the show is never less than lovely to look at, and most every second of it is deliciously acted, in a way you are meant to notice — it is comfort food packaged as a gourmet meal, old soap in a Tiffany container. And after a sometimes wayward second season, with its distractions of war and influenza, the present series brings both a return to form and to its original subject matter: the preservation of the estate.

From the pen of Julian Fellowes ("Gosford Park"), it is, briefly, the story of a big house (and a little house nearby) and the people who live there and suffer as a group from poor communication skills and an excess of pride. A few, mostly below stairs, are schemers, Maggie Smith's dowager countess being the notable plotter above, though she works for her family's reputation rather than personal advancement, having nowhere higher to advance.

"Downton" is paradoxical at heart: It satisfies our yearning for what appears a more clear-cut time, when everyone knew his or her place and its rules, even as it argues, possibly in spite of itself, for its destruction. It celebrates the old days and ways we are glad not to live in or have to follow.

And although a success at home in the U.K. — a fourth season and a prequel are in the works — it might have been specifically created to exploit romantic American notions of life in a British country house, as those grand Gothic-y piles are quaintly called, as well as our inbred post-colonial impression that we are above all that. It runs on a mixture of envy and desire.

Almost in recognition of this fact, we get a visit this year from Shirley MacLaine as the Yankee mother of the Anglicized lady of the house, the countess Cora (Elizabeth McGovern), all sharp angles and straight talk. And straight talk is just what these characters like to avoid, though they are also forever explaining themselves, in order that no point go unmissed.

Last year's plotting at times seemed practical rather than organic, crafted merely to build up or destroy the credit of this or that character, as when Robert, Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville), entered into an unconvincing, all-but-consummated affair with a housemaid. Even the well-loved witticisms of the dowager countess felt a bit weighted and compulsory.

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