My Downton Abbey Series Two, UK format -whatever it 's called.
Back in the day, I learned that you could buy the British CDs off Amazon.co.uk and play them on the Computer and then through the big screen TV. I watched many of Colin Firth's littler films that way.
So this year, as soon as the Second Series of Downtown Abbey came out on DVD, in mid November, I bought it.
For some reason it took a month to get by Customs (when normally I get these videos even quicker than ones sent from Toronto), so I only beat Masterpiece Theatre's January debut by a month.
Anyway, the first season Downton was a delicious treat, if not a little soap opera-ish, I thought. The second season is major soap opera-ish, though, I just discovered.
Except when you have production values that lavish and actors that good, soap opera becomes a kind of parody. Still, eye and ear candy par excellence. And a good portrayal of WWI (You see I've read Testament of Youth, so I'm an expert.)
The writing isn't quite as good as last year, I think, some of the sub-plots a bit too predictable, some of the characters have become too set in their schticks. ( Not Maggie Smith's character, though. The Dowager was the best character in the first series and continues to be in the Second. Hugh Bonneville, still very good.. Ah, it's really subjective, which character you like or don't - for whatever reasons.)
There's a Christmas Special coming out in the UK. I hope I can see that by the Spring.
This second season has a sub plot that is most weird, featuring a Canadian element. As a Canadian, I found it interesting, especially as Montreal is mentioned as the city of interest and not Toronto.
In those days, 1910 Montreal was the only Canadian city of worth. Toronto a mere backwater. It was pretty much that way in 1927, the year my play, Milk and Water, is set. Not any more.
This sub-plot may re-emerge. However weird it is. I didn't know a person could pick up a Canadian accent in a few years. Well, actually, apparently, my County Durham dad lost his British accent almost immediately upon arriving in Canada for good after WWII, so there you go!
Another subplot, where Daisy the scullery maid has to pretend she loves a footman (who is off to war) to please her boss, seems very realistic to me.
Indeed, I have war letters to Flora Nicholson of Threshold Girl from a certain Herb Tucker in Belgium.
He seems to think she's his girlfriend and yet when he returns with nothing but a broken finger, there's nothing more written about him.
The Tuckers are family friends.
Flora marries only much later in life, a poor uneducated man, a railway guy. A man some feel below her station. (My father says he was the nicest guy ever!)
From the 1910 Nicholson letters, I can tell she likes a certain Ross Cleveland, the son of another family friend in Montreal, Dr. Cleveland the dentist.
And I have a cut out from the Montreal Gazettte, about 1927, describing Ross's marriage to the niece of Sir Montague Allan - one of the most prosperous men in Canada.
Sir Montague even gives the bride away at the marriage. (I just checked and this man lost both his own daughters on the Lusitania, 1915.)
So real life is a bit of a soap opera sometimes. Poor Flora!
In my novel Threshold Girl (which the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe/Harvard has accepted for their collection on early women's lives - and which the National Library of Canada will catalogue as soon as I have the final draft completed.) she invites Ross to a dance at Macdonald - but he only dances one waltz with her.
I know, I have the dance card!!
Oh, and the plot where the youngest Crawley daughter runs off with the chauffeur. Cliche you say?
Well, frankly, my grandfather was a footman in Yorkshire (Helmsley I think the place was) and the story goes, the daughter of the Earl of the manor fell in love with him, so the Earl packed him off to Malaya to work in the rubber industry, a bribe of sorts, as those positions normally went to the sons of the Upper Classes...so again, a realistic plot line here in the 2nd season of Downton, even if it seems a tad cliche or soap opera ish.
Of course, this family story may be a myth too. Some old aunt told it to my father. Maybe she was a Romantic.
