Downton Abbey

One of the many excellent things about Downton Abbey is the variety of rich female characters creator Fellowes has fashioned.

Slow start Sunday, but the drama's beauty and quality are intact.

Clearly, writer-creator Julian Fellowes knows how to keep fans hooked, cleverly playing out credible character traits across time, and knowing the breathless pace of change resonates with our current passage into another modern age.

When Fellowes allows his characters to show that mettle and strength are not necessarily the prettiest things in the room, Downton transcends its soap bubbles and more than earns its histrionic plot twists.

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.

Much remains solid at the heart of rich Downton drama, and Fellowes has certainly shown in the past that he can bring it all back home.

Actors may come and go, inconveniently or not, and viewers may grouse, but Fellowes is composing a love letter to a way of life that's pretty much past.

It continues to be to Fellowes’s credit that he manages to write for such a large number and wide array of characters and yet makes viewers know and care about each one. None is purely hissable nor heroic, intentions are murky, and impulsive choices have major consequences, keeping the enjoyable soap at full lather.

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.

PBS made all but the final two hours of Season 4 available for review. And while certainly not a slog, they end up being more than a bit saggy.... ownton Abbey has no scenes or sequences of knockout import during these first seven episodes.

A house party brings an allegedly higher class of people--and their servants--to Downton as Season 4 kicks into gear, for better and worse. [10 Jan 2013, p.67]

You may not completely love this fourth vacation away from the 21st century, but lingering affection should more than carry you through.

Despite the pluses and minuses of the script, the cast generally delivers the goods, especially Phyllis Logan as housekeeper Mrs. Hughes, Joanne Froggatt as lady's maid Anna Bates, and Jim Carter as Carson, the overseer of the household staff.

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.

Clever dialogue and an unmistakable sense of place still make the show worth watching, even when the narrative is spinning its wheels.

Despite the occasional creakiness and lapses into melodrama Downton Abbey remains a show to watch, notable for its dreamy production values and the real depth of feeling it portrays between the classes.

The narrative this time around is even more stretched, derivative and repetitive than Season 3’s, but almost ingeniously so: It is both utterly predictable and surprisingly addictive.

Downton is on much firmer and more satisfying ground when charting the new romantic possibilities for Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) or spinning sentimental morality tales among the colorful servants below stairs.

Except for a dismally protracted story line, there’s more than enough pure Downton-ness to enjoy this time around.

It's that very attraction--familiar characters acting with familiarity and only the slipperiest of soap schemes to throw them off course--that fuels this series. It's not particularly elite anymore, but it's incredibly efficient.

While Downton Abbey has been stuck in the same basic theme of “tradition versus progress” for four seasons now, the closer it inches toward modernity, the more dynamic its basic setting of becomes, and there are moments in season four—particularly late in the season—when this version of the show shines through.

The show must carry on, and of course it does, but rather sluggishly.... Overall the acting from the ensemble remains strong enough to sweep you along from episode to episode. [13 Jan 2014, p.47]

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.

All this twee is verging on twaddle.

Its characters are depressingly the same.... Pretty much everyone else is recycling their old plot points, too.

Showrunner Julian Fellowes knew he had to spice things up, apparently, so he employed a lazy, “shocking” plot device that will leave fans sickened, indignant and wondering why Fellowes just didn’t give his beloved characters something worthwhile to do instead. That offensive event aside, this season’s repetitive tropes, recycled conflicts and predictable heartbreak are not worth the trouble this time around.

The show is becoming somewhat repetitive and a bit dull to the point that it feels like Downton, already renewed for a fifth season, needs to wrap it up sooner rather than later lest it overstay its welcome.