The end is nigh for 120 million devoted fans of one of the most popular period television dramas ever produced. The doors of Downton Abbey will close for good at the end of its sixth season, which begins on Monday, September 21.
A runaway hit since its debut in 2011, the upstairs-downstairs drama about British landed gentry and their loyal servants has become part of popular culture, parodied by late-night comics such as Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert, as well as on Saturday Night Live and Sesame Street, and has been credited with reviving a global appetite for British drama.
We should consider the sixth season a bonus, says Hugh Bonneville, who portrays Robert Crawley, the Earl of Grantham.
“We were all expecting to finish after the fifth,” he says. “But [the show’s writer and creator Julian Fellowes] felt it would be a bit truncated ... so he asked if we wanted to do another nine episodes to make the stories all land in a more appropriate way.”
Thank goodness for those additional nine hours to tie up the loose ends, because we have some very pressing questions that demand answers this season:
• Will Lady Mary Crawley (Michelle Dockery) respond to the affections of the handsome “snappy chariot” driver, Henry Talbot (Matthew Goode)?
• Will Mr Carson the butler (Jim Carter) and Mrs Hughes the housekeeper (Phyllis Logan) finally make it down the aisle?
• Will chauffeur Tom Branson (Allen Leech) find happiness in Boston? Just how homesick for Downton is he?
It is 1925 as we return to the posh Jacobethan-style country house, and its 5,000 acre English estate is under threat of subdivision. Lord Grantham and Carson are penny-pinching and getting rid of serving staff to make ends meet. “Who has an underbutler these days?” asks Grantham.
While Lady Edith Crawley (Laura Carmichael) is away in London, we’ll have the pleasure of some fresh verbal sparring from the high-handed Violet Crawley – the dowager countess of Grantham, so flintily portrayed by legendary actress Maggie Smith – with Lady Isobel Crawley, played by Penelope Wilton, who previously nursed her back to health.
“I have enjoyed immensely playing opposite [Smith],” says Wilton.
Fellowes says: “The Downton journey has been amazing for everyone aboard. People ask if we knew what was going to happen when we started to make the first series and the answer is that, of course, we had no idea.
“Exactly why the series had such an impact and reached so many people around the world – all nationalities, all ages, all types – I cannot begin to explain. But I do know how grateful we are to have been allowed this unique experience.”
While viewers have an entire season of Downton Abbey and crumbling Edwardian sensibilities still to enjoy, the cast and crew are already feeling the pain and loss now that the cameras have stopped rolling.
“We finished [filming] at Highclere Castle a couple weeks ago,” Bonneville, displaying a bit of the stiff upper lip, told television critics last month in Los Angeles. “That was quite an interesting day and full of memories and emotions.”
With much less reserve, Carmichael and Dockery admit they choked up on their final day of filming.
“It was very strange saying goodbye to the castle,” says Carmichael. “It felt like [our home] for more than six years. And as soon as they said ‘cut’ on that day, you realised it was just pretend. But, you know, it’s full of so many fond memories and it was very emotional.”
Of that last days, Dockery says: “We didn’t want to leave. Laura and I wandered around for the last time and suddenly we didn’t want to go home. It was really funny.”
Before leaving, the two took a moment to huddle on “Matthew’s bench”, says Dockery. “We had a bit of a cry.”
• Downton Abbey is on at 1am Monday on OSN First HD.
artslife@thenational.ae
