Masters and Servants

On Sunday night, the British period piece “Upstairs Downstairs” finished its three-episode run on PBS. The series, a followup to the much beloved nineteen-seventies British show of the same name, ought to have been met by the British public—and Anglophiles everywhere—with nearly as much excitement as the Royal Wedding. But, as Nancy Franklin points out in her April 18th review, the new “Upstairs Downstairs” had the misfortune of débuting shortly after the rather similar “Downton Abbey,” a wonderfully frothy series from screenwriter, novelist, and Tory peer Julian Fellowes.

Set in the twilight of the Edwardian era, just before the outbreak of the First World War, “Downton Abbey” (which is available online from PBS until the end of May and is currently streaming on Netflix) follows the travails of Sir Robert Crawley, the Earl of Grantham. When Robert’s closest male relatives perish aboard the Titanic, the future of his estate is thrown into chaos. Robert, you see, has three daughters but no sons. Robert’s presumptive heir turns out to be Matthew, a middle-class lawyer from Manchester who—quelle horreur—plans to keep his job. Robert and his wife, Cora, secretly hope that their haughty eldest daughter, Mary, will fall for Matthew, so that the fortune might stay in the immediate family. There’s tumult downstairs as well. When a mysterious new valet arrives at Downton Abbey, a civil war erupts among the staff.

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