SummarySeason two begins in 1916, with heir Matthew Crawley fighting in the Battle of the Somme while the staff at Downton tries to keep things as they were before the war, even as the estate serves as a military rehab center.
SummarySeason two begins in 1916, with heir Matthew Crawley fighting in the Battle of the Somme while the staff at Downton tries to keep things as they were before the war, even as the estate serves as a military rehab center.
While newcomers may wonder why so much is made of so little, they can’t deny the delicious one-liners Fellowes has written. Coupled with a driving score, Downton Abbey moves--in ways you never thought possible. It's good to see it back.
The cast is so uniformly good, frankly, it’s tempting not to single anyone out, and Fellowes continues to juggle the dizzying assortment of plots with what appears to be effortless ease. That said, one can see him repeating himself in some of the flourishes as the season progresses.
Viewers who look to Downton Abbey for loads of escapist splendor may want to temper their expectations when the wildly popular British drama returns for its fourth season on Sunday.
While there's plenty of potential fodder for a pulpy potboiler spread throughout the rest of the nine episodes, it's these more mundane, increasingly transient plotlines that come to define the latest installment of the series.
The show makes Granthams of all of us: content with what we have now (a middling costume soap opera) because we can still remember its glorious past (that first season). It’s safer and cozier than a show about open class warfare.