Downton Abbey (and other BBC type dramas)

[Frederica]

BTW, Tom & Lorenzo's Downton Abbey recaps are loads of fun.
http://tomandlorenzo.com/2016/02/downto ... -crashers/" target="_blank

[Changsham]

BTW, Tom & Lorenzo's Downton Abbey recaps are loads of fun.
http://tomandlorenzo.com/2016/02/downto ... -crashers/" target="_blank" target="_blank

Thanks for the link. It's a hoot. Will pass it on to my wife. She will love it.

[Phototone]

As to smoking, I have seen several DA episodes where the men had after-dinner cigars.

[George O'Brien]

Changsman, I agree with you entirely. That Tom and Lorenzo parody is spot on, as Lady Mary would say.

I really see no difference between Downton Abbey and the dumb soap operas girls used to watch when I was growing up, apart from better production values. "All My Children" dealt with the life and loves of one Erica Kane in a town presided over by a Maggie Smith type dowager, Phoebe Wallingford( played by Citizen Kane's Ruth Warrick) Plotlines, there as here, were determined more by the popularity of cast members and their careerism, as in Downtown's sudden death of Matthew when the actor Dan Stevens opted out for NYC theater and American films, and Sybil's sudden death when the actress playing her sought more money.

Julian Fellowes mined this lode to exhaustion years ago in "Gosford Park", and has resorted to plagiarism and recycling his own stuff. For example, Ivor Novello's entertaining the guests at Gosford Park is recycled as Dame Nellie Melba's singing for her supper at Downton. In a recent interview Maggie Smith has confessed that she has never watched an episode. Maggie has played Shakespeare, Shaw, and Coward; she knows Downton is piffle.

[Frederica]

Changsman, I agree with you entirely. That Tom and Lorenzo parody is spot on, as Lady Mary would say.
(snip)

In a recent interview Maggie Smith has confessed that she has never watched an episode. Maggie has played Shakespeare, Shaw, and Coward; she knows Downton is piffle.

There's nothing at all wrong with piffle, especially when it's pretty piffle. High Arte all the time would be dreadfully boring.

[entredeuxguerres]

There's nothing at all wrong with piffle, especially when it's pretty piffle. High Arte all the time would be dreadfully boring.

Maybe not when it's piffle recognized & accepted as such (like "All My Children," which, thanks to beautiful Erica, I remember well) but "High Arte" is exactly the image promoted by PBS, and undoubtedly what many take it to be; not you, of course.

[Mike Gebert]

Two favorite quotes that especially sum up why I love old movies, great and silly alike, and have wider applicability as well:

"Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash we have very little reason to be interested in them." —Pauline Kael

"More great art has been made by people who thought they were making entertainment than by people who thought they were making art." —Woody Allen

[Donald Binks]

"More great art has been made by people who thought they were making entertainment than by people who thought they were making art." —Woody Allen

I think that sums it up completely and puts the whole thing in the proper perspective!

[Frederica]

There's nothing at all wrong with piffle, especially when it's pretty piffle. High Arte all the time would be dreadfully boring.

Maybe not when it's piffle recognized & accepted as such (like "All My Children," which, thanks to beautiful Erica, I remember well) but "High Arte" is exactly the image promoted by PBS, and undoubtedly what many take it to be; not you, of course.

Heavens, how dreadful.

[George O'Brien]

"There's nothing at all wrong with piffle, especially when it's pretty piffle. High Arte all the time would be dreadfully boring."
Fred

Though not as boring as the last few seasons of Downton.

[Changsham]

Sometimes I half expect one of the actors to break the 4th wall and exclaim something like WTF, why do I have to say or do this or that at one of the many ludicrous and cringe worthy moments. Not surprised Dan Stevens walked out of the show.

[George O'Brien]

I haven't seen Downton much in the past two years, but I thought Maggie Smith might just do that in the out of left field Romanoff romance she was forced to try to make the viewer believe she had had in those dear dead days beyond recall at the court of Nicholas and Alexandra. She coincidentally bumps into her old Russian count of a lover at Downton, and when he struggles up from his chair and starts to declares something I quickly switched the channel. But not before I heard him intone solemnly: "You look as beautiful as the last time I saw you at the Winter Palace!"

Oh brother, quel frommage.

It was Dan Stevens who got me watching Downton in the first place. I saw him a few years ago in New York at the Walter Kerr Theater in a new production of "The Heiress". He shared the stage with David Straithairn and Jessica Chastain, but it was he as Morris Townsend who impressed most. I saw an episode or two just as his character was being killed off.

[George O'Brien]

There's nothing at all wrong with piffle, especially when it's pretty piffle. High Arte all the time would be dreadfully boring.

Maybe not when it's piffle recognized & accepted as such (like "All My Children," which, thanks to beautiful Erica, I remember well) but "High Arte" is exactly the image promoted by PBS, and undoubtedly what many take it to be; not you, of course.

Heavens, how dreadful.

Fredericka, it's worse than dreadful when piffle is marketed as high art, it's dishonest and ridiculous. Actually, I have never heard the term, "High Arte": are you quite sure you don't mean, "high culture"? Well, Downton is marketed as such. Each show boasts tasteful yet lavish commercials for expensive Olympic Cruises down the Rhine and the Danube, the waterways of "high culture" of "Old Europe"(as Rummy put it). I think the average American viewer dreams of maxing out his credit cards on Cancun, not Bad Nauheim. Then the show opens with credits featuring edgy synthesizer and keyboard riffs as the camera careens with a speeding train as Laura Linney,, in the manner of some neurotic malcontent, blurts the words, "Tonight, on Masterpiece ....."

All designed to prompt the average TV viewer to say, "Hey, this must be one of those arty things"

[boblipton]

George, I don't disagree with your analysis, but have you ever considered the plot of a typical opera? Or, as Anna Russell used to point out, every woman Siegfried sleeps with is his aunt, except for a married woman?

The way those Greek Gods carried on wasn't classy either. For a thousand years, High Art has been defined by the price tag.

Bob

[Mike Gebert]

I always hoped Downton Abbey would pull a Blackadder and all suddenly be Elizabethan for a season or something.

But the show I really hoped would do that was 24. I'd have loved to see Capt. Jack Bauer of the OSS trying to protect Ike against a Nazi assassination plot on June 5, 1944.

[entredeuxguerres]

George, I don't disagree with your analysis, but have you ever considered the plot of a typical opera?...
Bob

But the plot of an opera (as I sit here listening with only the sketchiest understanding to Ninon Vallin & Georges Thill singing Werther) is merely the structure to hang the music on, something, almost, in the background; it's not irrelevant, but it certainly isn't one's main interest in the performance.

[Donald Binks]

But the plot of an opera (as I sit here listening with only the sketchiest understanding to Ninon Vallin & Georges Thill singing Werther) is merely the structure to hang the music on, something, almost, in the background; it's not irrelevant, but it certainly isn't one's main interest in the performance.

Precisely! I once said I would give prize money to anybody who could explain to me exactly what was going on in "Die Frau ohne Schatten"! The music's wonderful though.

[Donald Binks]

I think this is the episode of "Downton Abbey" all the critics above missed out on?

[George O'Brien]

George, I don't disagree with your analysis, but have you ever considered the plot of a typical opera? Or, as Anna Russell used to point out, every woman Siegfried sleeps with is his aunt, except for a married woman?

The way those Greek Gods carried on wasn't classy either. For a thousand years, High Art has been defined by the price tag.

Bob

Ah, I see that you deleted your line about the word "operatic", and I don't blame you. Because the adjective "operatic" is more often than not used as a pejorative: denoting a person or thing as being bombastic, self indulgent, overly theatrical, etc. But some things are acceptable when done on a stage with a full orchestra underscoring every character's words, which are not spoken, but sung with the subject's full lung power. In an opera, one does not expect fidelity to everyday reality.

If opera were that way i expect absolutely no one would stay awake.

But on TV in 2016, even in a period piece, the viewer takes as a given that plotlines and the behavior of characters will correspond to what the audience perceives as real life. Movies are granted more leeway, and Opera, even more.

TV has always been a more intimate medium. Maria Riva, Dietrich's daughter, became a well known actress in TV dramas in the 50's. She tells a funny story from personal experience, illustrating the differences between the way a viewer she met reacted to film and to TV. I just looked for it on Youtube, and here is a minute and a half piece of it

https://youtu.be/xBIwBF69MxY/" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank

(It took me 3 tries but I think I got it this time)

[Harlett O'Dowd]

George, I don't disagree with your analysis, but have you ever considered the plot of a typical opera?...
Bob

But the plot of an opera (as I sit here listening with only the sketchiest understanding to Ninon Vallin & Georges Thill singing Werther) is merely the structure to hang the music on, something, almost, in the background; it's not irrelevant, but it certainly isn't one's main interest in the performance.

Don't tell Wagner that!

[wich2]

>Don't tell Wagner that!<

Or Verdi, with his Shakespeare pieces.

Or the various FAUST adapters.

Or most opera writers of the last hundred years.

[Harlett O'Dowd]

Fredericka, it's worse than dreadful when piffle is marketed as high art, it's dishonest and ridiculous. Actually, I have never heard the term, "High Arte": are you quite sure you don't mean, "high culture"? Well, Downton is marketed as such. Each show boasts tasteful yet lavish commercials for expensive Olympic Cruises down the Rhine and the Danube, the waterways of "high culture" of "Old Europe"(as Rummy put it). I think the average American viewer dreams of maxing out his credit cards on Cancun, not Bad Nauheim. Then the show opens with credits featuring edgy synthesizer and keyboard riffs as the camera careens with a speeding train as Laura Linney,, in the manner of some neurotic malcontent, blurts the words, "Tonight, on Masterpiece ....."

All designed to prompt the average TV viewer to say, "Hey, this must be one of those arty things"

I disagree - to a point. I don't think DA is being marketed so much as "high arte" but what used to be called "middle-brow arte." The show is light-years above and beyond, say, REAL HOUSEWIVES, even if the writing is not on scale of a TV adaptation of an Ibsen play. And there's room for all three types of programming.

DA may be the 21st century equivalent for the 1940s theatregoers who may not have been interested in something like MIKE TODD'S STAR AND GARTER .... or THE ICEMAN COMETH .... but found the musicals of Rodgers & Hammerstein mentally and emotionally satisfying. And these people, I suspect *would* welcome a vacation-of-a-lifetime to Europe over a week at a Cancun timeshare.

And while we're at it, most of the vintage films we love really fall in that middle-brow range too. Not every film (thank God) wants to be PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC .... nor is every film a B western or Karl Dane & George K Arthur comedy. Most were assembly line programmers ... for middle-brow audiences ... that were well constructed and competently produced. And that's great.

That said ... and as I said before .... I think DA became a victim of its own success and jumped the shark no later than the end of season 3 (in many ways after season 1.) But it's churlish to produce grapes this sour over something that really has taken the world by storm.

[entredeuxguerres]

...But it's churlish to produce grapes this sour over something that really has taken the world by storm.

How can it be churlish to set the record straight? Especially because of the thoughtless & undiscriminating adulation that has allowed it to "take the world by storm."

[Frederica]

...But it's churlish to produce grapes this sour over something that really has taken the world by storm.

How can it be churlish to set the record straight? Especially because of the thoughtless & undiscriminating adulation that has allowed it to "take the world by storm."

Why do you care?

[entredeuxguerres]

...But it's churlish to produce grapes this sour over something that really has taken the world by storm.

How can it be churlish to set the record straight? Especially because of the thoughtless & undiscriminating adulation that has allowed it to "take the world by storm."

Why do you care?

Because thoughtless & undiscriminating adulation, undenounced, provides the incentive for producing more of whatever first spawned it.

Not that the jingle of the cash register wouldn't drown out Jeremiah himself.

[wich2]

Not a big DA fan.

But I do think that what Harlett/Christopher writes is factually correct. And the many of the films that we revere here sit squarely in that Middle that he limned.

-Craig

[Frederica]

Why do you care?

Because thoughtless & undiscriminating adulation, undenounced, provides the incentive for producing more of whatever first spawned it.

Not that the jingle of the cash register wouldn't drown out Jeremiah himself.

And again, why do you care? There is no requirement for you to watch anything you don't like. What do you care what other people do?

[boblipton]

When beggars die, there are no comets seen. But then, there are fewer beggars in the stalls at the opera house than outside, and the wise artist flatters his audience. Then that audience will explain to the beggars outside that their sufferings are tragedies while the beggars' are not. Or they'll hire someone to explain it.

Bob

[entredeuxguerres]

Why do you care?

Because thoughtless & undiscriminating adulation, undenounced, provides the incentive for producing more of whatever first spawned it.

Not that the jingle of the cash register wouldn't drown out Jeremiah himself.

And again, why do you care? ...

Because, as my previous answer implied, I'd prefer to see (though I'm not holding my breath) better programming on PBS; now do you get it?

[Frederica]

And again, why do you care? ...

Because, as my previous answer implied, I'd prefer to see (though I'm not holding my breath) better programming on PBS; now do you get it?

Not really. There are a gadzillion other things to do than sit in front of the tube, things I'm sure would match your rarified requirements. There are still quite good things on television, for that matter, if you prefer to sit in front of the tube. I don't get why you care so very deeply when other people enjoy something you don't like.