“My parents came from different backgrounds. . . . My father’s was grander than my mother’s, so my mother had . . . to put up with the disapproval of my father’s relations. And . . . I saw it as a child when I didn’t really understand what was going on, and I saw it later as an adult when I did. . . From that grew a kind of interest, in a way, of the unfairness of class, the fact that it is so arbitrary in its selection . . . and yet it shapes a life and creates entitlement.” — “Julian Fellowes on the Rules of Downton,” National Public Radio, December 11, 2012
I really enjoy Downton Abbey, and I respect the writing of it very much. In the way that I know people, I find Julian Fellowes’s characters to be quite believable, realistically complex, and interesting. His characters are charming because he has so much respect for all of them.
I am watching the series for the second time this summer, and Mrs. Patmore has become one of my favorite characters:
I find her fun to watch because she is called a “cook” while, in reality, her character is a remarkable chef. The idea that with so little help she and Daisy, her assistant, can create these masterpiece dinners—with no dishwasher, food processor, or stand mixer–for so many people is downright funny.
The expertise Fellowes attributes to the service staff is an important dimension of the characters and of the show. The people who worked in service positions in the great estates were knowledgeable and highly skilled people.
What is often distracting to me, however, is how understaffed Downton Abbey is. In an estate of that size, there would be a veritable army of employees working in all capacities–groundskeepers, car mechanics, carpenters, and so many more. In a couple of shots of the estate, I glimpsed blacked-out windows in the Downton Abbey building. That’s completely understandable. Not even the show’s producers could keep the entire building open.
The good news is the Julian Fellowes is at work on two other series: Five Arrows about the Rothschild banking dynasty and The Gilded Age, set in New York in the 1880s.
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