Downton Abbey
PBS | ITV1 | ITV | INGTV | Release Date: January 9, 2011
CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
80
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 141 Critic Reviews
Positive:
126
Mixed:
14
Negative:
1
Watch Now
Stream On
Buy on
Stream On
Stream On
Stream On
Expand

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
75
Slant MagazineSal CinquemaniNov 12, 2012
Season 3 Review: Downton Abbey thrives when tackling plotlines that are confined to the personal and social conflicts of the estate, both upstairs and downstairs. Read full review
75
Slant MagazinePhillip MaciakFeb 17, 2012
Season 2 Review: Downton Abbey remains an extremely reliable television show. The appeal of the series is its pastness, its portrait of a completely foreign culture from a land before time. Read full review
70
The New YorkerEmily NussbaumJan 17, 2012
Season 2 Review: The British series, about the aristocratic Crawley family and their titular home, goes down so easily that it's a bit like scarfing handfuls of caramel corn while swigging champagne. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyKen TuckerJan 13, 2012
Season 2 Review: Despite all the repetition and longueurs, this Downton Abbey frequently works, as the first one did, as a peppery little trifle. Read full review
80
SlateTroy PattersonJan 9, 2012
Season 2 Review: Appropriate to the pace and the space of series television, it welcomes you into its intrigues at a walking pace. Read full review
83
Boston HeraldMark A. PerigardJan 9, 2012
Season 2 Review: Series creator and writer Julian Fellowes has a habit of using dialogue to telegraph the obvious. Read full review
100
New York PostLinda StasiJan 9, 2012
Season 2 Review: The series seamlessly moves between the horrors of war and the gentility of life in the show's titular 100-room manor. Read full review
70
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteRob OwenJan 9, 2012
Season 2 Review: Writer/series creator Julian Fellowes weaves together an engrossing tapestry of stories, although some of them stretch credulity or peter out. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterTim GoodmanJan 9, 2012
Season 2 Review: The characters are so beautifully and thoroughly rendered that we, as viewers, are caught up in their lives. Read full review
90
Boston GlobeSarah RodmanJan 6, 2012
Season 2 Review: Rarely do they strain the credulity of real situations or the constraints of the time. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesRobert LloydJan 6, 2012
Season 2 Review: It is big, beautiful, beautifully acted and romantic, its passions expressed with that particular British reserve that serves only to make them burn brighter. Read full review
70
Philadelphia Daily NewsEllen GrayJan 6, 2012
Season 2 Review: The second series, as they call it in Britain, shows signs of strain, as creator Julian Fellowes throws one obstacle after another between his sets of star-crossed lovers (some upstairs, some down). Read full review
70
The New York TimesAlessandra StanleyJan 6, 2012
Season 2 Review: Season 2 is in many ways as captivating and addictive as the first, but this time around, the series comes off as a shameless throwback to itself. Read full review
80
TimeJames PoniewozikJan 6, 2012
Season 2 Review: If Downton's staging and dialogue can be too on-the-nose, the characters are still drawn with great subtlety. Read full review
100
TV Guide MagazineMatt RoushJan 6, 2012
Season 2 Review: For those of us who hungered for a year to witness these new chapters, the appetite is insatiable. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalDorothy RabinowitzJan 6, 2012
Season 2 Review: The vibrant brew of upstairs-downstairs relationships is more savory now, the characters more complicated. Read full review
50
Washington PostHank StueverJan 6, 2012
Season 2 Review: Downton Abbey lacks surprise and is stretched precariously thin, a house full of fascinating people with not nearly enough to do, all caught in a loop of weak storylines that circle round but never fully propel. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleDavid WiegandJan 6, 2012
Season 2 Review: The emotional authenticity of Downton Abbey continues to make it a classic. Read full review
100
USA TodayRobert BiancoJan 6, 2012
Season 2 Review: There's nothing in Downton you won't recognize, and almost nothing you won't enjoy. Read full review
83
HitfixAlan SepinwallJan 5, 2012
Season 2 Review: The ideas behind most of these developments are fine, but they get thrown at the viewer so haphazardly as to require dramatic organ music when each is introduced. Read full review
100
New York Daily NewsDavid HinckleyJan 5, 2012
Season 2 Review: Season one set the bar high. Season two clears it. Read full review
70
The Huffington PostMaureen RyanJan 5, 2012
Season 2 Review: Your investment in the many stories spun out by creator Julian Fellowes may take longer to develop this year, because the costume drama's pace is off in the early going and it's far more contrived and inconsistent than it was in its first season. Read full review
90
Denver PostJoanne OstrowJan 5, 2012
Season 2 Review: Judging by the first five hours of the second season, it successfully broadens the storylines of several key characters. The cast is first-rate; only Elizabeth McGovern? occasionally rings a false. Read full review
88
San Jose Mercury News/Contra Costa TimesChuck BarneyJan 4, 2012
Season 2 Review: Some of the characters are so simplistically drawn that it's laughable. On the other hand, we love these characters so much and we're having such a jolly good time that we just can't resist Downton Abbey. Read full review
91
NewsdayVerne GayJan 4, 2012
Season 2 Review: Much grimmer, grayer and (gasp) dowdier. Still mostly wonderful. Read full review
75
People WeeklyTom GliattoJan 3, 2012
Season 2 Review: Luckily the characters are so fully formed, and so fully inhabited by the cast, that the whole mess staggers up out of the trenches and keeps going. [9 Jan 2012, p.39]
100
VarietyBrian LowryJan 3, 2012
Season 2 Review: Julian Fellowes has created such a vivid group of characters and assembled such an impeccable cast--effortlessly oscillating from comedy to drama--that the hours fly by, addictively pulling viewers from one into the next. Read full review
60
HitfixAlan SepinwallFeb 14, 2011
Season 1 Review: Now, I wouldn't say I loved it. Parts of it I didn't even like. I became quite engaged with what was going on downstairs with the servants, while I found virtually everything having to do with the Granthams (at least the parts unrelated to how they dealt with the staff) a chore to get through. Read full review
88
Slant MagazinePeter SwansonJan 10, 2011
Season 1 Review: For every Mrs. Patmore, the cook who wants nothing more than to stay in service the remainder of her life, there is a housemaid such as Gwen (Rose Leslie), who dreams of becoming a secretary in a modern office. It's these dichotomies, and the way they exist within both the Abbey itself (half the rooms have electricity and half don't) and its multifaceted inhabitants that make Downton Abbey not only the best soap opera currently on television, but one of the most relevant as well. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesMary McNamaraJan 9, 2011
Season 1 Review: Downton Abbey, which premieres Sunday, is this generation's "Upstairs, Downstairs," both in theme--the daily dramas of a titled British family and their many servants--and in stature. Read full review
80
SlateJune ThomasJan 7, 2011
Season 1 Review: Downton Abbey manages to be reassuringly familiar and yet surprisingly fresh. Read full review
100
New York Daily NewsDavid HinckleyJan 7, 2011
Season 1 Review: The next great "Masterpiece Theater" series has arrived. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleDavid WiegandJan 7, 2011
Season 1 Review: Fellowes does know how to write some tasty dialogue, especially for Maggie Smith....The other performances are equally winning, but beyond that, you can't help feeling these actors are having a jolly good time with all this overblown fluff. And so will you. Read full review
100
TV Guide MagazineMatt RoushJan 7, 2011
Season 1 Review: Watching Downton Abbey is like curling up with a really satisfying book, and I can't think of a better way to get through one of the crueler months of winter. This is one of those shows that after finishing it, I immediately began to envy those who had yet to experience the pleasure. Read full review
100
USA TodayRobert BiancoJan 7, 2011
Season 1 Review: There are worse sins than looking like a Jane Austen movie. In fact, with PBS' latest British hit import, the unfailingly entertaining Downton Abbey, it might even be a blessing. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalDorothy RabinowitzJan 7, 2011
Season 1 Review: There is no mystery about the potency of this series, slathered in wit, powered by storytelling of a high order. Read full review
90
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteRob OwenJan 6, 2011
Season 1 Review: As a new year begins, viewers will be hard-pressed to find a more sumptuous, engaging drama than the "Masterpiece Classic" miniseries Downton Abbey. Read full review
90
The New York TimesAlessandra StanleyJan 6, 2011
Season 1 Review: Snobs may sneer that the series could more accurately be called "Remains of the Gosford/Upstairs/Brideshead Revisited Park." But there are times when a sincere imitation is not only better than nothing--it's nearly as good. Read full review
100
VarietyBrian LowryJan 6, 2011
Season 1 Review: From virtually any angle, though, Downton Abbey is an almost peerless piece of real estate. Read full review
80
Philadelphia Daily NewsEllen GrayJan 6, 2011
Season 1 Review: It's quibbling to say that it feels at times as if Downton Abbey had been custom-designed for those of us for whom period romance is mother's milk, studded as it is with plucky heroines, accidental heirs and scheming dowagers, with just enough history thrown in to make the melodrama seem highbrow. It's not, really, though. It's simply delicious fun. Read full review
100
Boston GlobeMatthew GilbertJan 6, 2011
Season 1 Review: This extraordinary upstairs-downstairs drama, written by Oscar-winning "Gosford Park" screenwriter Julian Fellowes, is a dramatic, intelligent, soapy, comic, and wise piece of work, one that explores social shifts on the eve of World War I while delivering a remarkably engaging cast of characters. Read full review
next
Page:
Current TV Shows
By MetascoreBy User Score
1 92 The Pitt: Season 2
2 87 Hacks: Season 5
3 87 Industry: Season 4
4 87 Rivals
5 87 Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal:...
6 85 The Beatles Anthology
7 85 The Traitors [UK]: Season 4
8 85 Bait: Season 1
9 84 Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!
10 83 Lord of the Flies
11 83 Riot Women: Season 1
12 83 For All Mankind: Season 5
13 81 The Muppet Show (2026)
14 80 Outlander (2014): Season 8
15 80 The Other Bennet Sister: Season 1
16 80 The Comeback: Season 3
17 80 One Piece (2023): Season 2
18 80 Dark Winds: Season 4
19 79 How to Get to Heaven From...
20 79 Gary
SEE ALL