Washington Post columnist George F. Will has hit it on the head, as far as Downton Abbey goes! A few discerning viewers, he says, cheered when Lord Grantham lost his fortune in Canadian railway stock. Why doesn’t he just get a job? As Will pointed out, Grantham’s money came from his American heiress wife played by Elizabeth McGovern in this series glorifying noblesse oblige and upper-class paternalism.
Nevertheless, Julian Fellowes knows how to tell a good story, especially when it was focused on the love story of cousins Matthew and Mary, perhaps getting too melodramatic though, at times, for instance when Matthew suddenly stands and walks although his legs were paralyzed in a war injury, and more recently the sensational rape subplot which, unfortunately, seems to be carrying the downstairs story forward.
In any event, I liked the cousins-in-love story while it lasted, especially since it’s the main plotline of my new novel Boundaries: A Love Story.