In our house, we long ago gave up watching Downton as drama; it is best treated as a faintly hilarious comedy of manners.
The finale sure packed it in. The dog with the inconvenient name (Isis) seems to have wobbled off to join the other dead hounds in the family's doggy graveyard. What, no death kennel scene? A chap with a funereal face and The Book of Pets' Tombstones turned up, and that was that.
His Lordship took the death of his beloved mutt stoically. He had other things to ponder. What was it about Marigold, Edith's adopted child? A teeny tiny lightbulb flickered on, briefly, and went off again. But, was there something ... familiar about her? Oh yes, it turned out (much later; the lightbulb inside Lord Grantham's brain is of very weak wattage), there was.
This slow burn led to a completely unbelievable scene between his Lordship and his wife. He was to keep it a secret, she said. He was not to let Edith know he knew. Not even that stickybeak, the Queen of the Upper Nile, knew. Really? He had just figured out that his daughter, Lady Edith, had had a bastard baby to a bounder and all he had to say was that he was rather chuffed to be privy to a secret, at last.
There was Rose's wedding, just. Her sour-plum-faced mother, Susan, tried to wreck proceedings, twice. The first try was an elaborate one: Set up Atticus (on their first meeting, the first thing she said to her about-to-be-son-in-law was: "What a peculiar name." She's a right charmer) with a tart, and have her photographed leaving his room. That backfired when she wrote the name of the company employed to carry out the ruse in the chequebook which of course her about-to-be-ex-husband Shrimpy discovered. She flew at him, her sour-plum-face had curdled custard all over it. "Get down, you cat," said Shrimpy, fairly mildly, considering the circumstances.
Her second attempt was to announce, just before the wedding, that she and Shrimpy were about to get divorced. Atticus' father, Lord Sinderby, had announced at the pre-wedding dinner that people who divorced were losers. He also despised "card sharks, under-cooked fish, and duels". Well, quite. Don't we all?
There was much made of the Sinderbys being Jewish. "Do you have any English blood?" asked Sour Plum Face. And did they find it difficult to get staff, in these troubled times? They did not, said Lady Sinderby. "But then we're Jewish. So we pay well."
Daisy was leaving. Mrs Patmore wept. Oh, hang on, no Daisy wasn't leaving. Mrs Patmore cheered up.
"Another clang in the march of time," she had said, enigmatically, earlier. Which is about all you need to say about another year of Downton: Clangs, clangers, comedy.
- TimeOut
