Downton Abbey: Season 1 Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.5

Downton Abbey: Season 1 Blu-ray Movie Review

Upstairs, Downstairs at Gosford Park.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 29, 2011

One of the grand surprises in the often surprising career of director Robert Altman was his completely unexpected Gosford Park from 2001. This was a project initiated by Altman and co-star Bob Balaban, and it was Altman who evidently persuaded Julian Fellowes to craft the ornate and involving screenplay, one which combined elements of a traditional whodunit with a sort of class conscious analysis of Georgian England that was highly redolent of the old BBC miniseries Upstairs, Downstairs. Altman, who had made his reputation with a series of quasi-improvisatory masterpieces, might seem like the least likely director ever to initiate and then helm a project which was so inherently structured, one which fairly iconized the British stiff upper lip. And yet Altman’s always anarchic counter-cultural perspective melded effortlessly into Fellowes’ brilliant look at a series of characters thrown together in a manor house where a murder takes place. In my not so humble opinion, Altman was robbed of the Best Director Oscar that year (it went to critical darling Ron Howard for A Beautiful Mind), but at least Fellowes’ absolutely stunning screenplay was awarded a statuette, as it certainly rightly should have been. Fellowes against all odds has outdone himself with the relatively new British import Downton Abbey, an incredibly complex but easy to follow look at the residents of a huge estate starting in 1912 and moving forward two years in the first season of the show presented on this two Blu-ray set (a second season is currently in production and will premiere on PBS’ Masterpiece this autumn). Split fairly evenly between the “upstairs” drama concerning the family of the Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) and his American wife Cora (Elizabeth McGovern), and a rather tempestuous assortment of “service” personnel below, including Head Butler Carson (Jim Carter) and Lord Grantham’s valet Bates (Brendan Coyle), Downton Abbey may seem to have little to offer supposedly class-ignorant Americans, but the fact is if you give this show but one episode to make its impact felt, chances are you will be inexorably hooked and unabashedly compelled to find out what happens next to both the landed gentry, their servants, and a few characters who fall somewhat in between these two extremes.

The wonderful satirical “newspaper” The Onion described the sinking of the Titanic with the unforgettable headline World’s largest metaphor hits ice-berg. And, really, the Titanic has become such an enduring symbol of so much—Man’s hubris, the insane class system of the day, the inexorable power of Nature—that it’s hard to know where to begin sometimes. But Downton Abbey gives a whole new subtextual meaning to the tragedy. The series starts on the morning after the sinking, when news of the debacle is just reaching the shores of England, and the morning papers are full of the first reports of the tragedy and the first lists of those presumed dead. Two of the deceased are close relatives of Lord Grantham (whose family name is Crawley), and in fact due to the arcane laws of British inheritance, termed an “entailment" (familiar to Austen fans), none of the Lord and Lady’s three daughters will inherit Downton and its attendant fortune (actually brought to it by Cora as a dowry and folded into the Estate by Grantham’s father), and instead the whole megillah was slated to go to Lord Grantham’s cousin, one of the tragic victims of the Titanic’s icy fate. That throws a whole chain of events into motion. First of all, the eldest daughter, Mary Crawley, had been affianced to the son of the cousin, hopefully keeping Cora’s fortune intact with Downton Abbey. Now Mary is a free agent, as it were, but one without any immediate claim on either the Abbey or her mother’s money. More importantly, the next closest male relative is a third cousin, a commoner (the horror!), a barrister who is summoned to come start matriculating into life in the village and his duties as the next Lord Grantham. This young man, Matthew Crawley (Dan Stevens), arrives at Downton with his mother, Isobel (Penelope Wilton), and soon a plan is hatched by Lord Grantham’s imperious mother, Violet (Maggie Smith), to light some romantic sparks between Mary and Matthew, thereby keeping Cora’s considerable fortune in the immediate family.

Playing out against this “upstairs” drama are a series of interlocked stories featuring the “downstairs” servants, many of whom have been at Downton Abbey for most of their adult lives. Carson is an imposing presence as Head Butler (sort of the Chief of Staff), and his female counterpart, Housekeeper Mrs. Hughes (Phyllis Logan), also cracks a mean, if not too imperious, whip. Lady Grantham’s private maid is Mrs. Danvers-esque bitter woman named Mrs. O’Brien (Siobhan Finneran), a plotter and planner extraordinaire who seems to have an abiding interest in fostering the career of slimy footman Thomas (Rob James-Collier). Bates, the new personal valet to Lord Grantham, seems to have a few secrets stashed away behind his imperturbable façade, but that doesn’t stop Head Housemaid Anna (Joanne Froggatt) from quickly developing romantic interest in him. Several other characters play into this panoply of interrelated storylines, but Fellowes is a master at keeping every story arc completely clear. The most amazing thing about Fellowes’ writing is its absolutely astounding economy, where the viewer is able to glean salient facts about each individual character in just a moment or two.

As convoluted and perhaps irrelevant as these puzzle pieces may sound to a modern day (especially American) audience, Downton Abbey is one of the most unexpectedly riveting pieces of drama to cross the pond in years. An absolutely expert cast brings each of these disparate characters fully to life, and aided and abetted by a sumptuous production design (which brilliantly utilizes real life Highclere Castle in Berkshire as a stand-in for Downton Abbey), this is one of the most amazing recreations of a specific time and place to ever be attempted for series television. What’s so fascinating in Downton Abbey is how every character seems aware that fate has dictated certain “roles” which they must play, for good or for ill. The only outsider in this regard is Matthew Crawley (and to a lesser extent his mother), who suddenly finds his “station” in life completely changed and the expectations of what he should do and how he should behave similarly altered. Matthew and Isobel are therefore the fulcrum around which all sorts of aristocrats (largely the Crawleys) and those without means (largely the Abbey’s staff) revolve.

Downton Abbey is filled to the brim with wonderful moments, both dramatic and comedic. If some of the shenanigans involving Mary get a bit melodramatic at times, they are still within the bounds of believability in terms of the Georgian context of the piece. The relationship between Mary and middle daughter Edith (Laura Carmichael) is also fascinating, actually positively Freudian, and spins to a calamitous series of events as the first season unfolds. Maggie Smith is absolutely incredible as the Dowager Countess of Grantham and has a couple of lines in the series that will floor most viewers (one line was so funny I had to put the show on pause to stop laughing—you’ll probably know it when you hear it). But what is the overarching feeling of Downton Abbey is its incredible sweetness. This is a show that despite its melodramatic aspects has a goodness and fullness of heart which makes it a very rare, often uplifting, experience. I fully expected to find Downton Abbey an okay, quasi-“meh” sort of outing, and it has completely captivated me, becoming my new “must see” event. I’m eagerly anticipating the second season of the series, when the Crawleys and their servants move into the turbulent years of World War I.

Downton Abbey: Season 1 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Downton Abbey is presented on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer in 1.78:1 and the results are for the most part spectacular, at least within the confines of series television. This is one of the lushest looking television series to come down the pike in quite a while, and the Blu-ray for the most part offers a sharp, extremely well detailed image that is almost entirely free of artifacting. Colors are gorgeously robust and well saturated, shadow detail is for the most part exceptional, and the image is wonderfully clear and precise. There is some minor crush in the very darkest interior scenes, as well as a couple of nighttime sequences, and once or twice some very minor aliasing crops up, but it's extremely transitory. What works best here is the eye popping production and costume design, which pops brilliantly on this Blu-ray presentation. The incredibly ornate ambience of Downton Abbey (really Highclere Castle) is caught in all its splendor and fine detail reveals even the smallest patterns on the opulent furnishings. Similarly the many different patterns and materials of the costumes, especially the aristocratic women, are fully on display and are amazing.

Downton Abbey: Season 1 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Downton Abbey is granted a lossless stereo DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track which suffices perfectly well for a dialogue based drama such as this is. While it could be argued that some of the busier sonic moments, especially those with the servants flying to and fro both below quarters and up in the Crawley's living space, could have benefited from a surround track, and that John Lunn's elegant and elegiac underscore might have been better represented with one, the fact is there's really not a whole lot to complain about here. As expected, the veddy correct British elocution of the Crawleys comes through exceedingly clearly on this DTS track, and while many of the servants have pretty thick lower class accents, they're all pretty easy to decipher, at least most of the time (the optional subtitles can help in this regard). Fidelity is excellent, and while there isn't much opportunity for huge dynamic range and certainly not much LFE, the overall track is wonderfully full and extremely well articulated.

Downton Abbey: Season 1 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Making of Downton Abbey (SD; 13:09) is filled with interviews with the cast and crew and gives some background on Fellowes' ambitions with the series. Smith and Wilton are absolutely hilarious in this featurette.
• A House in History (SD; 9:40) is a nice look at the real life Highclere Castle and how the series utilizes the exquisite location to its benefit. Highclere's mistress, the Countess of Carnarvon, is interviewed and gives her feedback on what it's like to have a film crew and cast members regularly traipsing around her home.

Downton Abbey: Season 1 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Confession time: I pretty much expected Downton Abbey to be one of those "Yes, dear" shows I occasionally sit through to please my wife. Imagine my absolute and abject surprise, then, when I was almost instantaneously sucked into the drama of the Crawley family and their service staff. This is some of the finest writing in series television since Lost went off the air, certainly one of the highest compliments I personally can pay. Fellowes doesn't just have an incredible ear for dialogue, he has an incredible ear for character, where almost by osmosis the viewer is able to take in who all of these people are in a moment. Even if you're not typically drawn to period dramas, my best advice is take a one episode chance on Downton Abbey. If you're able to stop watching after that one episode, you are, as one of the characters quotes to another early in the show, a better man (or woman in fact) than I, Gunga Din. Highly recommended.