Why do we love 'Downton'? Let us count the ways

Why should we love Downton and her children?

Why are Americans so fascinated with the lords and ladies of Grantham and the dozen-plus servants who run their gorgeous, terrifying, cathedral-like country mansion on Masterpiece's Upstairs, Downstairs-ish drama Downton Abbey?

The ITV-produced nighttime soap, set in England during the first three decades of the 20th century, returns for its fifth season with a 70-minute episode at 9 p.m. Sunday. It will be followed at 10:15 p.m. by a one-hour making-of docu, The Manners of Downton Abbey.

The series, which already has been renewed for a sixth season, is a true TV phenom featuring a Who's Who of great thesps, including Hugh Bonneville, Jessica Brown Findlay, Brendan Coyle, Michelle Dockery, Elizabeth McGovern, and Maggie Smith. The show consistently receives critical raves. It also has attracted a stunning slice of the global television viewership, making it the most-watched British series since, yes, Upstairs, Downstairs (1971-1975) and Brideshead Revisited (1981).

As of January 2013 (the most recent data available), more than 120 million people had watched Downton at some point. PBS has said it is the most popular series in the 43-year history of Masterpiece. To cash in on the series' amazing life, ITV also is developing a prequel spinoff series.

Epic in its sweep, Downton opened in its first season with the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. Season 5 will bring us to the end of 1924.

Created and written by playwright and screenwriter Julian Fellowes (Gosford Park, Separate Lies), this is one costume drama in which frocks and petticoats aren't merely for show. Downton has the soul of a true historical drama. It charts the tectonic shifts that transformed Europe in the 20th century - from the spread of the automobile and household electricity to the ravages of World War I and the Spanish flu epidemic of 1919 to the rise of fascism in the '20s and, eventually in seasons to come, the '30s.

Yet it's also veritably microscopic when it comes to its intricate plotting. Its eight- and nine-episode seasons sometimes are set over the course of a single year or less.

Fellowes digs deep into the intimate lives of Downton's two dozen characters, juggling in each episode nearly half a dozen parallel story lines.

Borrowing the Upstairs, Downstairs structure, it follows the lives of Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham (Bonneville), who is Downton's master (though that's a changing situation); his rich American wife Cora (McGovern), whose fortune saved Downton from bankruptcy; and their three grown daughters, Mary (Dockery), Sybil (Findlay), and Edith (Laura Carmichael).

Downstairs, we are treated to the dreams, tragedies, and loves of the Crawleys' servants: the kind Anna Bates (Joanne Froggatt) and her husband John (Brendan Coyle); the snobbish butler Charles Carson (Jim Carter); and the slithering, backstabbing footman and valet Thomas Barrow (Rob James-Collier).

Why should Americans so love a show that celebrates a bygone era with values - a rigid class structure, monarchic rule with power vested in an aristocracy - anathema to our own?

Surely we do, given the popularity of TV costumers set during the same era, including Upstairs, Downstairs; The Forsyte Saga; Brideshead Revisited; The Grand; and The House of Eliott.

And like most of those other shows, Downton casts a wistful, if not loving, glance at the period.

But who were the aristocracy, at least as we see them in Downton?

Its sole purpose was to propagate itself - literally, by pumping out heirs, and ideologically, by maintaining its values as the British norm. Think of Downton's first two seasons: The Crawleys seemed to live in a hermetically sealed jar.

They produced little or nothing of actual value for the British public. As Robert's mother, Violet (Smith) says in disgust in Season 1, when she finds out the estate's sole living heir is a lawyer, their sort of people don't have jobs, careers, or professions, other than their homes and families. (Her son doesn't even take interest in government.)

All their money - and time - is invested in their estates. As Robert says several times, he was reared for the sole purpose of maintaining his estate, which includes the dozens of farms surrounding his home, not to mention the village of Downton itself. His life is devoted to the estate's upkeep and to the production of a male heir.

Considered from a global point of view, the Crawleys' reason for being is narrow, almost pitiful. So are the lives of their servants and tenants (farmers, craftsmen, and shopkeepers), who are devoted entirely to helping them do the actual labor necessary to maintain the estate and produce heirs. Their life is absurd - much like the lives of the aristocrats portrayed in director Alan Bridges' savage satire The Shooting Party.

A terrifying thought occurs to the viewer: What if the Downton estate is a metaphor for Britain itself? At least the Britain of yesteryear - magnificent, dying, and in denial?

It's easy to understand why the lives of the Crawleys - and even those of their servants - strike us as idyllic.

A rigid class structure means everyone knows his or her place in the scheme of things. We, on the other hand, live in no such age. Ours, to be sure, is an age of infinite possibilities - for self-creation, self-improvement, self-reinvention. But the flip side of that is a lack of defining markers for identity and meaning. Life in the 21st-century United States is not all that stable, and it's exhausting.

Robert and his butler Carson have stable identities. More vital still, the Carsons of the world knew that they would be secure in their positions. A job often was a job for life. Very attractive in our age, when the worker is disposable and employers do not need to feel responsible for wage earners' welfare.

Downton is about not only the age of aristocracy but also its death pangs.

Robert and his family often remark that estates like Downton can't survive much longer given the economic, political, and social changes around them, including the Great War, the Russian Revolution, the establishment of an Irish republic, women's suffrage, and the rise of trade unions.

In the opening scenes of Season 5, the Crawleys are horrified when they realize voters are embracing some of these new values when the country's first Labour government takes power in 1924.

But there are more sweeping, harsher changes: The feudal system at work at Downton no longer works. The estate is hemorrhaging money and can be saved only if Robert employs capitalist methods.

At one time, he placed the highest value on maintaining a protective, paternalistic relationship with his tenant farmers. Now the expectation is that the farms run smoothly, efficiently, and, above all, profitably. Efficiency, once a means to an end, becomes an end in itself.

Robert, who nearly bankrupted himself with bad investments, is on the verge of a nervous breakdown through most of Season 4, as he realizes his management style is inefficient.

And so we come to our world: Our boss isn't our mother or father, and our job most certainly is not guaranteed for life. In work as in leisure, we strive to maximize efficiency. We spend "quality time" being with people instead of devoting actual time to them.

With its luxuriously long episodes, its lovely, measured pace and rhythm, Downtown Abbey makes for a nice respite from our own kind of madness. Love it for that, if for nothing else.

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