This ITV series was written by award winning writer Julian Fellowes (see also Gosford Park) and was produced for TV by Carnival Films. Starring the inimitable Dame Maggie Smith as Violet Crawley the meddlesome Dowager Countess of Grantham, the series tracks the lives of the aristocratic Crawley family and their servants in pre-World War I Britain. Hugh Bonneville and Elizabeth McGovern play the Earl of Grantham (Robert) and his American heiress wife (Cora).
The series begins in 1912 just after the sinking of the Titanic which claims the lives of Lord Grantham's... first cousin and heir James Crawley and his son Patrick who had been intending to marry Robert's daughter Lady Mary Crawley (played by Michelle Dockery). This now leaves the estate with no immediate successor. As the housekeeper succinctly says, this has caused a "complication", as there is now no guarantee that the money will remain within the family. The next in line turns out to be Robert's third cousin, a young solicitor from Manchester, who none of them have ever met and who subsequently evokes resentment both above and below stairs due to class and cultural differences. The first series ends with Mary and Matthew's turbulent relationship hanging in the balance and Lord Grantham's shocking announcement that Britain is now at war with Germany.
The second series returns us to Downton in 1916 and the effect the war has had on all the characters is sympathetically described in great detail. Several of the characters are sent into the trenches, Downton becomes a temporary convalescent home, people (including the Crawleys) find they have to turn their hand to all sorts of essential tasks and the personal relationship sagas continue throughout. Other storylines introduced in the first series are also continued. When the war ends, the Crawleys and their servants try to return to some sort of normality. Will they be able to revert back to how things were or has the war changed people irreversibly?
This beautifully made series was shot, partly on location at Highclere Castle in Berkshire and partly in the village of Bampton, near Witney, in Oxfordshire.
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The first two series of the award-winning ITV costume drama following the lives and loves of those above and below stairs in a stately home prior to the outbreak of World War One. The Grantham family, long time custodians of Downton Abbey, face a crisis when the heir to the estate dies on the Titanic. With his three daughters unable to inherit by law, Robert Crawley (Hugh Bonneville), the current Earl of Grantham, must try and marry his eldest daughter off in order to obtain an heir. Meanwhile, the family's determination to cling to class and rank is mirrored in a number of growing rivalries between the servants which threaten to undermine the smooth running of the house. In series two, after the outbreak of WWI, Matthew (Dan Stevens) and Thomas (Rob James-Collier) are off fighting at the Somme, while both Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) and William (Thomas Howes) feel frustrated at being barred from taking part in the fighting. Meanwhile, Lady Sybil (Jessica Brown Findlay) defies her aristocratic position and enlists in the Royal Army Nursing Corps, while Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) puts on a brave face when Matthew arrives home on leave with his future wife Lavinia Swire (Zoe Boyle) in tow.
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