Part of its appeal is the smugness of hindsight. Just like “Mad Men’’ helps us think, “At least we’re not that sexist,’’ “Downton’’ lets us congratulate ourselves about American social mobility. Sure, we’ve got our 1 percent, the series reassures us, but we’re not all consigned to being masters and servants forever.
Actually, the “Downton’’ folks aren’t, either, which gives all of the dishiness some heft; this second season is set during World War I, when the necessities of war (plus some dark stuff happening in Russia) are setting the stage for a social shift in Britain. Characters greet the end of an era with varying levels of hope and dread; some of the older servants seem to cling the hardest to old ideas about order.
But the show seems most entranced with the notion of downward mobility. Consider the coming-of-age daughters of the wealthy Crawley family, raised in a palace that’s even bigger than Mitt Romney’s house in New Hampshire. Lady Mary is about to marry a common-born newspaper mogul, who sees their union as a business partnership. Lady Sybil is flirting with her Bolshevik chauffeur. Lady Edith steals a snog with a local farmer.
Some beaus are more suitable than others, but at least these women have a post-Jane-Austen sense of determination, the chance to replace the torpor of wealth with real love, or at least with accomplishment. As they help with the war effort, they discover that social standing can be a trap, and that life is more interesting when they’re doing something useful.
Of course, this is TV. In Britain, “Downton Abbey’’ has drawn flak for painting too pretty a portrait of the master-servant relationship. In last Sunday’s episode, a dowager countess browbeat a range of religious and military men to help a wounded footman. The Brits say a real-life countess wouldn’t have cared, and that one of her throwaway lines rang more true: “When you give these little people power, it goes to their heads like strong drink.’’
