‘Downton Abbey’: The Sun Never Sets on a Good Bedtime Story
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale tries its hardest to assure us that no, no, no, for sure, this time it’s definitely over.
As the third movie to follow the last episode of a six-year TV series, that’s not a surprise — nor is the fact that this ending, like the other quasi-endings before it, comes in for a soft landing. On that score, all of us fans would demand no less.
Following the long-standing insistence of creator/writer Julian Fellowes that the tale of these early 20th century British aristocrats and their staff should not extend into the 1930s — a period Fellowes feels has already been mined extensively by series like Upstairs, Downstairs — The Grand Finale wraps up in 1930, acknowledging the 1929 stock market crash without getting into the depressing chain of events that would soon start to unspool as Britain and the rest of humanity marched toward World War II.
Frankly, my dear, we don’t know what will happen to Downton Abbey after 1930. We don’t know whether the Crawley family will maintain its 158-year stewardship or whether their stately home will meet the fate of many real-life aristocratic estates, to be chopped up or offloaded to the National Trust.
Fellowes has left that question to the speculation of Downton’s many loyal followers, and while they are doubtless intrigued to imagine how Victorian Era children like Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) or Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael) might react to the 1950s or 1960s, when they could very likely still be alive, Fellowes has wrapped it up with the slice of the story he chose to tell, from the Titanic to the dawn of the Depression.
That story hasn’t been wholly idyllic. More than half a dozen characters have died, including central players Matthew Crawley (Dan Stevens), Sybil Crawley (Jessica Finley-Brown) and the Dowager Countess Violet (Maggie Smith). Almost every character has made bad decisions, a couple with lethal consequences. One was imprisoned on suspicion he had perpetrated a vigilante murder. Quite literally, street justice.
All of that fell in line with the notion, not unfounded, that Downton Abbey had a fair amount of soap opera in its DNA. But in the overall picture, Fellowes and his partner Gareth Naeme actually created something rather quaint in today’s action-driven TV and movie world: a gentle drama in which characters we like almost always do what they consider the right things, tend to the needs of others and make the world a little more mannered and civil.
In the process it doubtless does spin a bit of an upstairs/downstairs fantasy. We know that British aristocrats, or any aristocrats for that matter, are often far less benevolent than Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) and the Crawley family. We know that life “in service” is and always has often been harder than the downstairs life at Downton Abbey.
But the truth is, the fantasy element is a big part of why millions of us savored the TV show when it aired on PBS’s Masterpiece Theater. It creates the kind of past we all remember, imagine we remember or wish we could remember. Like fictional tales back to the ancient Greeks and probably before, it takes us away from a real world with too much hardship and anger, where it sometimes feels like anyone who is different or powerless is labeled “them” and dismissed, persecuted or scorned.
In Downton Atbbey, differences are noted and accepted, albeit sometimes gradually. Almost everyone wants to live a peaceful life in comfort and security, harboring no ill will toward those who only wish the same.
If all that makes Downton Abbey sound preachy, it’s not. But it’s neither accidental nor incidental that it has made a few sociological points along the way, like the observation that those born to privilege aren’t better people. They just have more privilege.
In any case, the happy endings for most of the characters in The Grand Finale — or at least endings that suggest no imminent trauma or danger — have been earned. Fellowes over the years constructed an elaborate, clever, charming and thoroughly engaging tale that in many ways comes down to the golden rule. As ye sow, so shall ye reap.
At the same time, Fellowes clearly believes that there are people who never change — that would include the admirable butler Carson (Jim Carter) — and people who learn as they go along, which would prominently include Lady Edith and Lady Mary.
It’s not a big surprise or spoiler that in The Grand Finale they continue mending a relationship each over the years has taken turns ripping apart.
Their antagonism, your basic cocktail of jealousy and exasperation, did help power the show’s drama, which is doubtless why Fellowes extended it right up to a marvelous scene not long ago when Edith suggested to Mary that perhaps one day their shared memories would overtake their mutual dislike.
Downstairs, we watched the kitchen helper Daisy (Sophie McShera) grow from an insecure mouse into a grownup with confidence, opinions and ambitions. Elsewhere downstairs, perhaps the most interesting evolution was Barrow (Robert James-Collier), who started out as an insidious weasel and became a sympathetic chap once he admitted who he really was.
That’s just a sample, and The Grand Finale generally reinforces these evolutions rather than introducing new twists. The fresh elements stem more from Fellowes’s fondness for amusing one-shots, which include a subtle allusion to Mr. Pamuk (fans will remember), a wonderful brief girl-talk exchange between Mrs. Hughes (Phyllis Logan) and Mrs. Patmore (Leslie Nicol) and a marvelous running gag built around guest star Noel Coward (Arty Froushan).
In any event, a lot can happen in 18 years, especially when they include a World War and the Roaring Twenties, and the Downton Abbey world we leave at the end of The Grand Finale in many ways little resembles the world to which we were introduced a decade ago.
But the 18 years we knew it were good years in which to know it, and chronicling those changes was doubtless what intrigued Fellowes in the first place.
Assuming this really is the end for Downton Abbey, saddened fans might find some consolation if either or both of two reports turns out to be true.
The first is that Fellowes has hinted he might develop a prequel series that would focus on the young Violet and the rather rambunctious life at which she hinted a couple of times in the Downton series.
The second is that Fellowes might write a couple of Downton characters, that is, their younger selves, into his current HBO Max series The Gilded Age. One of the Gilded Age characters is a wealthy young American woman who, like Lady Grantham (Elizabeth McGovern), married into an aristocratic British family that has status but needs money. Since The Gilded Age is set around the time Robert Crawley and Cora would have wed, some interaction would not be inconceivable.
Downton Abbey’s life may be finite. Not so our pleasure in gentle fantasy.
