Downton vs House of Saddam: Home fires still burning

Compared to Downton Abbey, House of Saddam has far more shootings.

As the flames licked the walls and curtains of poor plain Edith's bedroom this week, the plot of Downton Abbey (8.30pm, Thursdays, Prime) seemed finally to be in real and imminent danger of catching on fire. Sadly, however, the fire brigade put it - the plot and the fire - out before things got too exciting.

God knows the premiere of series five was in desperate need of something. Heavens it was dull.

It's been about one and a half seasons since I was last a gentleman caller at the Abbey, but despite the breakneck speed of Julian Fellowes' plotting, Downton still appears locked in amber. The more things change the more they, er, change the same, as Mrs Patmore might put it.

The year is now 1926 and Lord Grantham, the prize idiot, is still droning on and on about the end of civilisation as he knows it.

This time the threat isn't his bankruptcy or a war or some Irish oik making off with a daughter, it's the prospect of living under - horrors! - Britain's first Labour administration. "Our government," he thundered, "is committed to the destruction of people like us and everything we stand for." Damn bally socialists!

His daughters are still in no looming danger of getting married and clearing off. The snooty dark haired one is trying to work out whether she ought to have premarital intercourse with some young shaver with a title but not much personality.

It's not like she doesn't have form for it, now is it?

Since I last laid eyes on her, poor plain Edith seems to have got up the duff - God knows how - to a fellow who may or may not be in Germany. In any case the mere sight of his name on the flyleaf of a book was enough to cause poor plain Edith to fling the volume at her bedroom fire and inadvertently cause the near destruction of her curtains, carpets and Lord Grantham's sleep.

Her deserted toddler, meanwhile, seems have been laid off on some local peasants. I hope they're not damn bally socialists.

The Dowager Countess is still tirelessly flinging bon mots: "There's nothing simpler than avoiding people you don't like, it's avoiding one's friends that is the real test."

Never a truer word etc etc.

Meanwhile Carson, the prize toady, was invited - rather than Lord Grantham - to head up the local war memorial appeal committee. I, if not Grantham, blamed the Reds for this appalling snub.

Downstairs the main plot line appeared to be Thomas, who sadly seems to have given up smoking for good, blackmailing one of the female servants, Baxter, about her criminal past leading to her tearful confession to Cora. Yawn!

The first episode's set piece was a grand dinner to mark the Crawleys' 425th wedding anniversary. This went to hell in a hat when one guest, a local schoolteacher who may or may not fancy Tom, turned out to be a damn bally socialist.

Up the workers and down with desserts etc etc.

The chief relief of the episode was that the godawful Bates, whose ruddy past is still trying to haunt him and us, was barely seen and Edith only cried twice.

Still the House of Crawley, upstairs and down, is light relief compared to the House of Saddam (8.30pm, Fridays, SoHo). For some reason HBO and the BBC decided to make a ponderous and rather flat four-part miniseries dramatising the political life of Saddam Hussein. Perhaps some Fox News viewers are still wondering how the hell their country ended up in Iraq for 10 years.

I am yet to watch last night's second episode, but my overriding impression from the first, which saw Saddam stage a coup, purge his enemies and then start a war with Iran, is that the House of Saddam has many more moustaches than the House of Crawley. Also there were many more shootings. Comparisons, as the Dowager would no doubt observe, are odious, but I don't believe Lord Grantham, prize plum though he is, is in the habit of shooting his servants. Well not yet, and not on purpose.

Actually that's it! That's exactly what Downton Abbey needs: a bloodthirsty purge of Grantham's enemies! And he should start with those bally lefty cads on the local war memorial appeal committee.

- TimeOut