Downton Abbey - initial impressions
I've watched bits of DA now and then but this is the first time I've actually sat down and watched an episode properly - in this case, the premiere of s1.
Am I going to be torn limb from limb if I say I really really didn't care for it?
In part, it's the fault of the magnificent Parade's End, the recent adaptation of a Ford Madox Ford trilogy that is set in roughly the same time period among the English upper classes. I fell for Parade's End the way I haven't fallen for a British show before or since, and DA pales before how smart, how visually gorgeous, how enormously moving I found Parade's End.
But even if I had never crossed paths with Parade's End, I am afraid Downton Abbey and I were never destined to be friends. I am hardly a radical but watching this show with its casual classism, while mired in the paradigm of 'good servants are happy to work for the people whose only superiority is that their great-grandfather slept with someone important/was good at beheading/presented a King with a treasured crocodile' makes me want to turn into a Communist revolutionary and rant at the servants until they pick up their kitchen knives and fight. (For comparison, I had no similar issue with Parade's End because its focus was on the futility of war, disintegration of marriage, the pitfalls of rigid norms, thwarted soulmates etc. DA, by its very nature, revolves around the upstairs-downstairs set-up and master-servant interactions). It doesn't help that I don't really care for any of the characters, with the exception of Mr. Bates and Anna (who apparently become a couple in the future, yay!). The whole aristocratic family either bores me or annoys the hell out of me (sadly, our heroine, Mary is in the latter camp). I don't have to like a character, but he or she has to interest me, at least.
On a shallow note - I know there are good-looking people in England because I've seen them in other productions and even *gasp* occasionally on the street during my trips there. So it's a mystery to me that the production has not managed to find any man or woman to cast who I find even remotely attractive. I even peeked at future characters in hopes - nope, they are all possessed of faces that makes the prospect of Edwardian sex in the dark not only appealing but required.
Am I going to be torn limb from limb if I say I really really didn't care for it?
In part, it's the fault of the magnificent Parade's End, the recent adaptation of a Ford Madox Ford trilogy that is set in roughly the same time period among the English upper classes. I fell for Parade's End the way I haven't fallen for a British show before or since, and DA pales before how smart, how visually gorgeous, how enormously moving I found Parade's End.
But even if I had never crossed paths with Parade's End, I am afraid Downton Abbey and I were never destined to be friends. I am hardly a radical but watching this show with its casual classism, while mired in the paradigm of 'good servants are happy to work for the people whose only superiority is that their great-grandfather slept with someone important/was good at beheading/presented a King with a treasured crocodile' makes me want to turn into a Communist revolutionary and rant at the servants until they pick up their kitchen knives and fight. (For comparison, I had no similar issue with Parade's End because its focus was on the futility of war, disintegration of marriage, the pitfalls of rigid norms, thwarted soulmates etc. DA, by its very nature, revolves around the upstairs-downstairs set-up and master-servant interactions). It doesn't help that I don't really care for any of the characters, with the exception of Mr. Bates and Anna (who apparently become a couple in the future, yay!). The whole aristocratic family either bores me or annoys the hell out of me (sadly, our heroine, Mary is in the latter camp). I don't have to like a character, but he or she has to interest me, at least.
On a shallow note - I know there are good-looking people in England because I've seen them in other productions and even *gasp* occasionally on the street during my trips there. So it's a mystery to me that the production has not managed to find any man or woman to cast who I find even remotely attractive. I even peeked at future characters in hopes - nope, they are all possessed of faces that makes the prospect of Edwardian sex in the dark not only appealing but required.