Rated: PG
Directed by: Michael Engler
Written by: Julian Fellowes
Produced by: Gareth Neame, Julian Fellowes, Liz Trubridge
Co-Produced by: Mark Hubbard
Executive Produced by: Nigel Marchant, Brian Percival
Starring: Maggie Smith, Michelle Dockery, Laura Carmichael, Imelda Staunton,Tuppence Middleton, Joanne Froggatt, Allen Leech, Jim Carter.
It’s 1927, the roaring twenties. English-style. The Charleston is an underground dance craze and the plots and schemes are swirling, above and below stairs.
Beginning with the nib of a fountain pen as it traces a loop in glossy, black ink, the opening scene follows the byzantine logistics of a royal missive. With the precision of finely-tuned clockwork, the envelope then travels from steam train to a maze of narrow backstairs corridors before it is finally placed on a silver tray and delivered to Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) as he ambles down to breakfast with his favourite retriever in tow.
The king wishes to visit, even though the upstairs coterie are harbouring an Irish republican in their midst. Worse, Lord Grantham looks set to miss out on his inheritance and Violet Crawley, the imperious and incorrigible Dowager Countess (Maggie Smith), is not prepared to stand for it. Above stairs the scene is set.
Below stairs, apart from a few minor skirmishes, all is humming along nicely. The Downton staff are thrilled to be showing off their domestic skills to the royal couple; that is, until the king’s personal valets, the king’s chef Monsieur Courbet (Philippe Spall) and the ‘terribly scary’ royal butler (David Haig) arrive to take over the household duties and steal their moment of glory.
Although deeply miffed at the royal interlopers, the Downton staff are sufficiently cowed to stand aside. That is, until scheming pair Anna Bates (Joanne Froggatt) and her husband (Brendan Coyle ) hatch a plot: ‘We’ll meet in the wine cellar.’ Over the protests of the butler (Jim Carter), ‘it’s ‘treason’, the household staff agree to fight back, and, in so doing, find themselves rather perversely staging a minor revolution in order to perform their own cooking and waiting duties.
From the clatter of new millennium machinery to the dinging and tinkling of bells on shop counters, we are subtly drawn in to a world in transition. Not only from an era where handcrafted workmanship is giving way to the age of the machine, but to a time where the old certainties and the precisely ordered clockwork society that king and queen represent are being almost invisibly eroded from beneath. Not only are the staff getting uppity, but the women are more openly standing up to the men. Although, in the world of Downton Abbey, they’ve been arranging affairs all along.
Not that Downton Abbey sets out to deliver any type of lesson, unless that lesson be in the art of Machiavellian intrigue. Rather, the experience is a heady cocktail of tomfoolery and power moves. While some may find the setup lengthy, aficionados will appreciate the clever dialogue, the exquisite costumes, the sense of romance that perfumes the air and the devious minds at work.
When the credits rolled on opening night, the entire theatre offered up a round of applause. And that is something that doesn’t happen very often.