Back in the day, when Downton Abbey first reared its ugly head, I vowed that Literature R Us would not print one word on this misbegotten progeny of a thousand (rough count) previous Merchant-Ivory monstrosities. Well, I kept my word throughout the show’s six-season run, never viewing a single episode. Then Donald Trump became president. There’s only so much reality a man can take. Compared to Truth, the soothing syrup of feudal fantasy might be a pleasure.
If only! I believe I can match my capacity for willing suspension of disbelief with the best of them (see my recent shout-out to Pretty Little Liars as proof), but my cup, and gut, were overflowing after less than three episodes of Downton. I’ve scanned–without much success–Wikipedia’s synopsis before giving up in both bewilderment and disgust, but it isn’t the plot so much as the tone of the damn show that caused me to flee so quickly.
The opening hook for the show is that Downton Abbey, the vast, ancestral (I guess) estate of the earls of Grantham, will be more or less up for grabs with the passing of the current earl, “Robert” (Hugh Bonneville), thanks to the fact that Bob and his American wife Cora (Elizabeth McGovern) have produced three daughters but no sons, the heir of the whole estate being a nobody fourth or fifth cousin, Matthew (Dan Stevens), decidedly not to the manor born.
In addition to the “upstairs” crew–Bob and Cora and the girls, I mean– we have the “downstairs” crew–a gaggle of servants, most of them either dewey-eyed and adorable (particularly the maids, of course) or gruff and curmudgeonly on the outside and sweet and vulnerable on the in, though there are a few bad ‘uns, who sportingly all smoke cigarettes, so we can identify them easily.
First and last, I was overwhelmingly put off by the idea that it’s okay, in any sense of the word, for five people to be knocking about in a house the size of Grand Central Station, with two or three dozen menials rushing about night and day to keep everything looking just so. You want to tell me about your twenty-foot ceilings, dude? Try fifty! Yes, that’s right, fifty! I rather enjoyed the sisters–young, pretty, and “spirited”–the standard aristocratic kitsch, pretty much–but the setting made me ill, so that I couldn’t really concentrate on the girls and their lightly bitchy sisterly rivalries.
My back was already up, way up, when a major “theme” set in, the education of Matthew, the new heir, to the notion that, without earls, England would starve. It’s a fact! If you dress yourself, then you’re turning your valet out into the street, without either purpose or sustenance. Let the fellow lay out your things, and choose your cufflinks, so that he can say stuff like “In honor of her ladyship’s birthday, I thought the antique gold might be appropriate.” He likes saying things like that! It makes his day! He also likes getting up at five in the morning to shine your shoes and staying up past midnight to scape the mud off your riding boots! And, anyway, if he couldn’t do that, why, he’d starve!
The over-riding story arc–well the over-riding story arc of the first three episodes I “sampled”–is that not only are the Granthams the lords of all they survey, they are the economic foundation of all they survey! Without the “golden shower”–so to speak–which they graciously spray upon their inferiors, “all this” would a howling waste, inhabited by nothing more than wild beasts and a few piteous, blue-skinned wretches. Nowhere is it suggested in these three episodes that it is the Granthams who are the dependents–the parasites, in truth–extracting enormous and entirely unmerited rents from the hapless tenants of the estate’s lands, together with unspecified investment income, equally unmerited and unearned. And Bob, the current earl, is constantly congratulating himself on his to devotion to Downton, how he pours everything he has into the estate, how he’s building something greater than himself, when in fact he is the one, as “master”, who benefits from it all, a great swollen tick with antique golden cufflinks.1
Well, I could go on. But you get the drift.
Afterwords
Today’s billionaires, of course, dwarf the holdings of the earls of Grantham. The poor we shall always have with us, Jesus? Yeah, but how about the rich? Can’t we get rid of them?
- Golden, that is, when they aren’t platinum. ↩︎
