Forget alchemy, forget fool’s gold, ‘Downton’ is now Brass. That is to say, a surreal and funny parody. Bradley Hardacre’s trouble at mill was billed as comedy, however, and in ‘Downton’ viewers have to look very hard, probably with HD, 3-D and freeze-frame, to find any sign of an actor’s tongue residing in their cheek. Or for any intentional humour at all. Well, there was a Great War on, don’t you know. It was a time of such deprivation that the rich Crawley ladies were having to turn out week after week in the same dinner frocks. I say! Nothing to do with ITV budgets in our own straightened times then?
Last Sunday’s episode tipped the balance. The previous two weeks had strained the scales with Lady Mary’s reedy-voiced rendition of ‘If I were the only girl in the world’, something she always seems to have believed, and a cameo by Harry Hill. (No? Different show?) and the deathbed wedding of footman William. He looked remarkably well for someone who was dying, but clearly wasn’t up to the mark, since he failed to notice his bride’s utter lack of passion for him. This Sunday we had the brief re-appearance of the soon-to-be-ex Mrs Bates, before she exited in another way entirely. Her snarling all-round villainy had us expecting a green complexion, a long warty nose and an even longer pointy hat.
We also had an English Patient-esque, errrm, Canadian patient, who claimed he was English. He also claimed, through his burns and bandages, to be the heir to Downton, supposed drowned on the Titanic in the very first episode. No DNA testing, no identifying features and only hazy memories of hiding from the nanny cut no ice, nor mustard, with the Earl, who preferred paralysed, barren Matthew to inherit rather than a “not very pretty” Canadian. The discovery of a fellow passenger on the ill-fated liner with the same name as the wannabe heir sealed his fate, and off he wheeled into the sunset with a note to Edith about it being too hard to try to be a Crawley. The silly girl had believed him. She’d obviously never heard of the Titchborne Claimant. Her dad’s granite countenance softened rather too much on seeing the new maid, taking us further into Hardacre territory. All he needed was a fat cigar. He’d been given a handy excuse, though, in the form of his wife’s sudden transformation into a schemer. She'd reintroduced the wet Miss Swire to distract moping Matthew, thereby clearing the way for press baron Rupert Murdoch Richard Carlisle to intimidate Lady Mary into marriage.
Phew! As if that weren’t enough for one episode, former maid Ethel was forced to give up hope of support from her caddish lover and father of her illegitimate child when he died at the Front, Lady Sybil is still half-heartedly pursuing the chauffeur, the sour-faced O’Brien duo managed to sneak in yet more smoking breaks and eavesdropping moments, while butler Carson was persuaded to forsake Downton for Lady Mary’s sake and... Matthew felt a tingling in his legs! He’ll be up and about again in no time, we’re sure, and doing the Charleston in a mad attempt to forget the horrors of the trenches, until the Earl loses all his money in the Crash....
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