The beginning of the end for Downton Abbey

Downton Abbey returns for its sixth and final season.

It's Downturn Abbey as Crawleys lose their servants.

It is a scene that would no doubt horrify the Dowager Countess: Lord and Lady Grantham venturing below stairs to prepare a snack, without the aid of a single servant.

But that is just what viewers will see in the final series of Downton Abbey, as austerity bites and the aristocracy faces up to a very different future.

Britain's best-loved period drama is bowing out after six seasons in which it has faithfully recreated life in a grand country house.

When the show began, in pre-World War I England, the delineation between the upper and lower orders was marked. The Crawleys lived in splendour, with vast numbers of staff and an unshaken belief they would forever be at the top of society.

Now, Downton is downsizing.

Staff will receive redundancy notices and the family must learn, for the first time, to look after themselves - from getting dressed to making their own meals.

The driver of that change is the family patriarch, the Earl of Grantham, played by Hugh Bonneville, who comes to the realisation that fading fortunes and the prohibitive cost of maintaining a crumbling stately home mean the Crawleys can no longer live in the manner to which they once were accustomed.

Discussing storylines from the new series, set in 1925, Bonneville says: "We visit a neighbour in the county who literally has to sell the [family] silver. This once great estate is being fragmented.

"Robert [Crawley], the dinosaur that he has been all this time, does adapt. He wants to conserve the best of the past but absolutely understands that the future beckons.

"The final season very much has a flavour of the end of an era."

The character most resistant to change is not a member of the Crawley family, but Carson the butler. When the Earl tells him Downton must shrink its workforce. Carson (Jim Carter) protests, pointing out that the household cannot get much leaner - the house has just two footmen, where it once had six. But the Earl replies: "I don't like to feel out of step with my fellow man. Who has an under-butler these days?"

Another scene sums up the enormous changes - The Earl and his wife (Elizabeth McGovern) are shown visiting the kitchen to view their new refrigerator - a modern appliance installed to the horror of the cook, Mrs Patmore - and to make themselves a snack. The days of being waited on hand and foot are coming to an end.

Speaking to Vanity Fair magazine at the season launch in Los Angeles, executive producer Gareth Neame said the show would illustrate the decline of the aristocracy in the 1920s.

"That concept comes in really sharply in the final season. It is just accelerating the idea that Downton Abbey can't continue the way it has, so the idea of scaling down and downsizing becomes more and more clear," he said.

Some of the faithful staff will be forced to leave Downton as a result. "Sometimes people lose their jobs and have to go out and find another job. It doesn't come across as sad in the show, but it will hopefully make it feel like an ending. We will get to the final episode and the camera will drift away and that is the last time we will ever see them."

Downton Abbey
When: Tonight 8.30pm
Where: Prime
What: The beginning of the end

- The Sunday Telegraph