Downton Abbey

Beautiful, elegant final ride, full of love and nostalgia and joy.

The final Downton season is satisfying, engaging and nostalgic.

Far more frequent are those moments that are likely to cause anyone who likes the show and the characters to smile or tear up, as on-screen and off, we all face the necessity of letting go of the past.

Fans should be mostly pleased with how everything develops over the course of the season, and most importantly, how it all ends.

It remains what it has been for years--a pretty melodrama, whose characters we’ve come to know well, grounded in a thought-provoking historical moment.

Writer and creator Julian Fellowes provides a sweet parting gift, indulging fans with closure on so many dangling storylines, while offering fiery and long-overdue exchanges between some of the most popular characters.... His ensemble of actors is equally generous, each giving such steadfast performances in these last episodes of the award-winning series.

Even though it was starting to feel a bit threadbare in recent years, its classy departure is likely to leave its legion of fans pining for more. [4-17 Jan 2015, p.14]

As always, Fellowes explores the lives of his sprawling cast – both the aristocratic upstairs family and the downstairs servants who attend to them – with wit, unabashed romance and no shortage of humor.

These final episodes of "Downton Abbey" are among the show’s best since the first season.

As is always the case in this dense and sprawling enterprise, the results vary from scene to scene, by turns wise and sentimental, condescending and hilarious.

The first eight episodes of the sixth and final season, although not flawless, remind us of why we care about the show.

Devoted and casual fans of the series alike will doubtless enjoy the gentle winding up of stories that have progressed over so many years, with new beaus for Mary and Edith introduced at the end of last season, an increasing degree of liberation for the servants, and even a glimpse of happiness for the tragedy-ridden Bateses. Meanwhile Downton’s villains, always cartoonish, remain so.

Characters behave pretty much exactly as we've come to expect; plush décor and candlelit dinner parties dazzle the eye; and the actors dive into their scenes with the gusto of carnivores dining at a top-dollar steakhouse.

In the new season, the show’s best and worst impulses continue to exist side by side. ... But here and there, Mr. Fellowes has raised his game.

[These] episodes find the celebrated series running true to form. That means an occasional misstep, to be sure – too much time inexplicably spent with one of the blander characters or a less-than-intriguing subplot. But, for the most part, it means elegant storytelling that richly blends social commentary, comedy, soap opera, romance, intrigue, tragedy, melodrama and razor-sharp satire.

For a series dedicated to supposed historical realism, Downton Abbey wraps things up with a bow of pure fantasy.

There’s much intrigue and backbiting going on in the small domestic household of the Dowager Countess, but that, too, ultimately goes nowhere. Fellowes hints at drama and pulls his punches.

While it's wonderful to be reacquainted with the various charming characters for the sixth and final season, the series' essential problems remain: A lack of subtlety as plot turns are signaled and then underscored; a tendency to keep certain characters stuck in one emotional state for prolonged periods--how much more angst can Anna and Bates (Joanne Froggatt and Brendan Coyle) telegraph again and again?, and a reliance on our allegiance to certain actors.

This season disappoints when it comes to Mary's story arc.... When Downton ends in March, it will end as it began, quietly, politely, and most certainly not with a bang or narrative flourish.