BATES, pawing through his dog-eared copy of Blackstone’s “Commentaries’’: “I can’t marry you yet, legally. And I won’t break the law.’’
Or this:
Ambulatory eyebrow cultivar LADY MARY CRAWLEY: “Do you remember when Lady Rosamund found you and Richard Carlisle together in the garden?’’
The possibly virginal LAVINIA SWIRE: “I thought I’d hear more about this.’’
CRAWLEY: “She thought he was threatening you and now she’s decided that you were behind the Marconi scandal in 1912 . . .’’
SWIRE: “I remember the Marconi scandal.’’
CRAWLEY: “No, let’s forget it. . . .’’
SWIRE: “But Lady Rosamund is right, I did start the Marconi scandal.’’
Oh, do tell.
She does tell, and tell, and tell. Those are verbatim quotes - Bates was not fingering a copy of Blackstone, forgive me - from the broadcast event of the moment, season two of PBS’s seven-part miniseries, “Downton Abbey.’’ It’s airing here on WGBH, on Sundays until Feb. 19.
By any metric, “Downton’’ has hit a home run. Nationally, it has more than doubled PBS’s prime-time audience. Locally, “Downton’’ is enjoying a 5.8 rating, twice as high as “Masterpiece Classic’’ ratings last year. It is too early to know if that translates into increased memberships or pledge commitments for WGBH.
So public television has momentarily expanded its audience beyond its core fan base of superannuated, upper-class twits - thanks to a superannuated, upper-class twit. Sir Julian Fellowes , who created “Downton,’’ is a life peer in Britain’s House of Lords, lives in a grand manor house in Dorset, and is married to a royal lady-in-waiting. Their son is the Honorable Peregrine Charles Morant Kitchener-Fellowes, to which one can only say: Pip! Pip!
Inevitably, Fellowes has been accused of favoring the aristocracy in “Downton,’’ and he does. Many of the British upper class’s uglier traits - its antipathy toward children, and its bred-in-the-bone anti-Semitism, to name just two - are kept well out of sight, like unpolished silver. But what the heck, it’s television.
