Downton Abbey

I watched this over the last few days and did enjoy it. It looked absolutely fantastic throughout, but storywise it went downhill from about the mid-way point. Its start with the entail and the new heir was interesting. I loved how being a lawyer who was the son of a doctor was seen as shockingly low class. But as it progressed it became a bit farcical. The flower show sub-plot annoyed me, the perfect, enthusiastically naive, harem-pants wearing daughter was too much of a caricature. I thought we might actually see her become less naive as she struck up a friendship with Branson, bearing in mind that for a large part the suffrage movement at that time was largely just campaigning for votes for upperclass women as even landless men at that point had no vote.

Worst of all was the level of "bad guy" that Thomas and O'Brien sunk to. Instead of being interesting, normal, characters who were not happy to only ever have certain opportunities and rise so high, but not further, they were just mean. Most of the other servants were all the type who were happy with their lot and position and never queried the class system. Except for Gwen, who needed lady modern to get her a new job. Daisy was also annoying, the cook had a large staff of kitchen maids, so I don't understand why the dim-witted scullery maid was who she turned to, to spoil the food for upstairs.

Too many corners were cut plotwise in the latter episodes, which was an awful pity as few corners appear to have been cut by production. It's unusual for ITV to go to such expense and employ such perfection to the look and feel of a show. It's a pity that the effort was let down by a slide into paint-by-numbers plotting and characterisation.

Still though, it was enjoyable diversion and it has great potential if the scripts for the second series are tighter.