It's Downtonmania! Tonight, the Nation gets back into the Abbey Habit... Here's our Downton Dossier
By Daily Mail. 21 September 2013
The wait is almost over… Downton Abbey returns to UK's ITV for its fourth series at 9pm on Sunday.
Its storyline picks up six months after Matthew Crawley was killed in the Christmas Day special and captures the hedonistic spirit of the new jazz age, including Downton’s most extravagant party yet – complete with an operatic turn from Dame Kiri Te Kanawa.
Although the show has been off the air for nine months, its cultural impact has not dimmed – not least in America where its quintessentially English sensibilities have been spoofed by everyone from rappers to The Simpsons.
It’s also on the lips of politicians – ever-keen to show they are on top of popular trend.
As anticipation rises before tonight’s episode, here’s our light-hearted guide to all things Downton.
The hotly anticipated fourth series of Downton Abbey begins on Sunday at 9pm,
picking up six months after the death of Matthew Crawley
Homage is where the heart is
Hollywood A-Listers are so enamoured with the show that they are lining up to pay tribute – in parody form, at least – with everyone from Sesame Street to Whoopi Goldberg getting in on the act.
Rapper Sean Combs, also known as Puff Daddy, is perhaps one of the show’s more unlikely fans. Pre-empting the introduction of Downton’s first major black character in this series, a jazz musician, the hip-hop star cleverly edited footage from the show so he could appear as Lord Wolcott, the new owner of the Abbey.
In the online parody, he advises Lord Grantham to invest the family fortune in a little company called IBM. He also fights off an unwelcome advance from Thomas Barrow, the gay under-butler, telling him: ‘Have you lost yourselves, man? I can’t love you, not when I love Sybil and Mary and Miss Patmore and the Dowager Countess and a couple of them maids. How can I have room for you?’
Goldberg appeared in a spoof called Downton Sixbey, alongside Brooke Shields as Lady Nora, in a segment for Jimmy Fallon’s American chat show, while long-running sketch programme Saturday Night Live reimagined the show as ‘Fancy Entourage’, calling the Crawleys ‘a bunch of honkeys who live in a church’.
Sesame Street made a puppet parody called Upside Downton Abbey, while another website remixed it with the Nineties Will Smith sitcom to create The Fresh Prince Of Downton Abbey. And an online song parody based on Petula Clark’s 1964 hit Downtown begins with the line: ‘If you are snooty and know your social duty then you belong at Downton.’
The Simpsons paid animated tribute with ‘Simpton Abbey’, parodying Downton’s familiar opening credits to show the family’s Springfield home in a very different light
Even Downton’s own stars have got in on the joke. Hugh Bonneville, who plays Lord Grantham, Rob James Collier who plays Thomas, and Jim Carter who plays Carson have all starred in Breaking Abbey, which mixes Downton Abbey with the drugs drama Breaking Bad; with Lord Grantham deciding to manufacture crack cocaine to solve the Abbey’s financial problems.
The Drama that's a Political Football
Politicians have been keen to capitalise on the ‘upstairs-downstairs’ class division depicted in Downton.
In last year’s Commons debate on the Budget, Ed Miliband mocked the privileged backgrounds of David Cameron and his Cabinet colleagues by saying: ‘We all think it’s a costume drama. They think it’s a fly-on-the wall documentary.’
Not to be outdone, Education Secretary Michael Gove recently accused Labour of being ‘The Downton party’ which wanted to keep working-class children in their place. Politicians overseas have also used the show for political point-scoring. In Australia’s recent General Election, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd accused his opponents of trying to take Australia back to a mythical past which combined ‘Upstairs Downstairs and Downton Abbey’.
And Right-wing commentators in the US say the ‘wild’ success of the show is a threat to America’s liberal left, because it proves that people like to look up to the super-rich.
It’s not just politicians who have learned that the show can be the ultimate insult.
Earlier this year chat show host Conan O’Brien said that CNN replacing veteran broadcaster Larry King with Piers Morgan was like ‘sending for the second footman from Downton Abbey’.
Luckly, Mail on Sunday writer Morgan saw the funny side.
Right-wing commentators in the US say the 'wild' success of the show is a threat to America's
liberal left, because it proves that people like to look up to the super-rich
'Downton the Hatch' drinking game
Downtonites have embraced their favourite show with themed dinner parties – and a drinking game called Downton The Hatch.
The rules provide 26 different excuses for viewers to take a tipple, including ‘whenever Lord Grantham is upset by something he reads in the paper’, ‘whenever anyone says something negative about Americans’ or ‘whenever the honour of Downton is at stake’.
Websites such as What Would Carson Serve? and Mrs Patmore’s Kitchen advise fans on the best meals, while Downton Abbey Cooks features 100 recipes that have featured in the show.
Another online tribute, S*** The Dowager Countess Says, collects together all the waspish put-downs uttered by Dame Maggie Smith’s popular character.
The Crawleys have friends in high places
The show has some esteemed fans: Michelle Obama invited stars Hugh Bonneville and Elizabeth McGovern to the White House and was subsequently accused of acting like Marie Antionette after it emerged she had tried to get an advanced copy of the third series.
Downton even got a mention in the Iron Man 3 movie when henchman Happy Hogan, played by Jon Favreau, was unmasked as an unlikely fan.
Downton stars Hugh Bonneville and Elizabeth McGovern were reportedly
invited to The White House by Michelle Obama who is a fan
A Perfect Pitch for the Premiership
America’s NBC Sports Network seems to believe the goings-on of the Crawley family are even more popular than top-flight football.
It advertised its coverage of the Premier League with: ‘Forget Downton Abbey. The real English drama begins on August 17.’
...and my! 10 years haven't aged them
Downton began three years ago, but in its fictional world, ten years have elapsed since that opening episode, set in 1912.
But with the possible exception of Violet many of the characters seem hardly to have aged at all despite all the heartbreak and turmoil they have had to endure.
A spokesman for the show was last night unable to say precisely how old the characters are. We know that the Dowager Countess married her late husband sometime before 1860.
Aging gracefully: Though the show began in 2012 its action has already spanned 10 years,
though you wouldn't know it from the characters' appearances
If she was 20 at the time of the wedding that would mean she was in her early eighties for this series, which starts in 1922.
Her son Robert was in his early twenties when he married a 21-year old Cora in 1889. And that would mean the couple were now in their mid-fifties.
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