Sunday nights, 9pm, ITV1

Not in costume.  Repeat: NOT in costume

The aforementioned alchemy is swiftly being exposed as fool’s gold this series (except for ITV, who are cashing in to the extent of dishing up 53 minutes of drama in a 75 minute slot).  Credibility is stretched to groaning point to service the soapy plots:

• Despite being as large and grand a house as, say, Highclere Castle, the inhabitants of Downton just can’t avoid clashing with decoratively wounded officers when they open for business as a convalescent home.
• Said home is ‘managed’ by none other than Thomas the Evil Footman, who is only a Corporal.  Did they have ‘managers’ besides officers, doctors and nurses?  The Crawleys are reconciled to this unsettling state of affairs, despite Lord Grantham knowing just how Evil Thomas really is, because hey, he’s a soldier now, not a footman anymore, and he’s been made an honorary Sergeant so the officers will respect him.  Of-course.
• Bates the sanctimonious ex-valet returns to a local village, despite having been blackmailed into leaving with his jealous wife, and is working in a pub.  Is this because he’s in love with Anna the goody-goody maid?  Well, yes, but when she offers him everything she’s got, he refuses.  She makes the offer in the pub, where she’s gone on her own as a respectable working-class woman.  As you did in 1917....
• Mary the snooty eldest daughter makes a heroic self-sacrifice, losing the chance of happiness with heir Matthew to protect strangely-coiffeured Lavinia who’s been bad, but for good reasons.  The world was very much smaller in those days: Matthew’s fiancée has a past with the man who’s asked Mary to marry him.  (Apparently Mr Fellowes finds Mary attractive because ‘she doesn’t need to be liked’.  Hmm.)
• Matthew’s Ma has transformed from the voice of reason in series one to a bossy harpy in this one, even telling the Earl that he can’t have his wounded friend to stay because it’s not approved by ‘the system’.
• Every man is suddenly very fond of plain Edith, whom everyone has previously agreed is spinster material and who indulged in a smooch with a married farmer last week.  And talking of last week, Carson the butler has made a miraculous recovery from his collapse.
• The Chateleine is abrasive with the similarly spiky Dowager but allows her Evil maid - mother of Evil Thomas - to lecture her about what she can allow to happen in the household.
• The Crawleys are now so poor that Mary must wear the same evening dress to every event.  At least she has a new hairstyle in the offing, after her maid tries out her curling tongs....

Throwing in hurried mentions of the Russian Revolution and a subplot about an Irish chauffeur who lost a relative in the Troubles is no substitute for plausible plotting to keep an audience believably in 1917.  Just about the only likely event was footman William’s belief that baby-faced Daisy would be his sweetheart when in fact she doesn’t fancy him.  Daisy’s got engaged to him just so he doesn’t kill himself at the Front.  This has happened in virtually every WWI drama ever made, so it must be true, no?