Downton Abbey walked so that Bridgerton could f***
The announcement of a third Downton Abbey movie was a welcome surprise for those who fell for the (deliberately restrained) charms of the series when it debuted in 2010 (in the UK, at least; Americans had to wait until the following year for its US premiere), but one that came with a particularly obvious question looming in the freshly-manicured background: Why does anyone need Downton Abbey in a world where we’ve now got Bridgerton?
Don’t get us wrong; we get why Downton Abbey hit big when it first arrived. We, too, kept watch on those early seasons, wondering whether or not Bates would ever get himself to tell Anna how he really felt — that man was far too repressed for his own good… or ours, as viewers! — or whether Cousin Matthew would win over a family that it didn’t really seem cared for him one bit. (Well, except Cora, but she was always an understated, understanding sort.) We enjoyed the cutting remarks from the Dowager Countess, brought to life as only Maggie Smith could manage; similarly, the double act of Phyllis Logan’s Mrs. Hughes and Jim Carter’s Mr. Carson was at once fearsome and wholesome, as if the show had magically discovered the stand-in parents we’d always longed for and never quite deserved.
Moreover, Downton felt like it understood everything that audiences had always loved about the classic British period drama — the outfits, the poking at a sublimated class structure to see just how fragile it really was, and the unspoken emotions that stiff upper lips got in the way of flying freely — and delivered it in a manner that was updated and doing exactly what a modern audience wanted. Downton Abbey was funnier, snarkier, and more cutting that people were used to from the traditional period drama — and it was, in its own way, trashier, as well.
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