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Downton Abbey
2010 · TV series · 66 min episodes · 6 seasons
Created by Julian Fellowes
A chronicle of the lives of the aristocratic Crawley family and their servants in the post-Edwardian era—with great events in history having an effect on their lives and on the British social hierarchy.
10 positive4 negative23 neutralfrom 37 commenters
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43 comments on Hacker News
Downton Abbey played on this, they had to let people film a movie in their home just so that they could afford to fix the leaky roof =)
So you think, but you're wrong. What really drives distrust in science is claims of infallibility and demands for total trust, so the only ones that remain expressing doubts are oil lobbyists and those whom they've convinced, hence your misidentification of me as one of them.
Let's take a small detour. In the show Downton Abbey, there's an episode where a character may be sick. Two doctors give their diagnoses. One says she's not sick, and that he's 100% certain. The other says he thinks he knows what illness she has, but he's not totally sure - despite knowing the patient better. Still he recommends treating her for that illness. They go with the first doctor, he turns out to have been wrong, and the patient dies.
Even the humanities and English literature graduates that wrote that show understood what you do not, that the person open about their uncertainties and faults is more trustworthy than the one claiming to be perfect. Not only is more trustworthy, but is the one that people will trust, that is why they gave that characteristic to the doctor they wanted the audience to side with - the likable permanent character, not the antagonizing guest character.
Wow what a rabbit hole to get into.
The whole system of “lordship” is wild to me, I recommend watching Downton Abbey for a light intro into the topic :)
I’m really into the TV show Downton Abbey, and lately I’ve come to take one of the characters as a role model of mine, and it’s telling that that role model is the Butler. Still a position to aspire to but squarely in the lower classes. I think there’s a balance, but engaging with your own life, whatever that is probably leads to more happiness to continuous aspiration. So many of our billionaires seem miserable. Even more so if you pine for that life to the absence of caring for your own.
It’s interesting how society never really teaches you how to have enough. But, of course, having more doesn’t really change your position. For the most part, unless you’re a top billionaire, relatively speaking there are still so many people above you. If my career took off like a rocket, it actually probably wouldn’t change my position much.
And being wealthy or famous or successful is just a set of activities. Ones that in some way, aren’t that much different from the activities you can pursue as an upper middle class person.
There are so many activities that I can pursue that I enjoy, maybe more than I would enjoy the activities of a billionaire. In my heart I think I know there’s something great in a moderate life. Something filled with friends and family and personal challenges and triumphs. But I’m certainly not immune to the world of comparison we live in.
Gosford Park? Omg, that's the only one worth watching! It has a plot. I period drama but couldn't get past two episodes of Downton Abbey. Too sugary and boring.
Showing my age a bit here, but when I think of her this film is always what I'm reminded of. That phrase "I am Miss Jean Brodie... and I am in my prime" in her frightfully posh Scottish accent rattles around my head quite a bit for some reason.
I've always thought of her as being well-known, but apparently it was Downton Abbey that really made her properly famous, which she didn't really like: https://x.com/lewispringle/status/1839680373774581849
Not sure…
I have a bundle of Downton Abbey that is no longer for sale on iTunes and I can play it, but (for a while, they may have fixed it) at the end of an episode you had to navigate to the next episode by selecting the show and scrolling horizontally through every single episode. Technically possible but very irritating.
(Funny thing: I was watching the show when the switch happened… I watched two or three with the obvious play next episode in series behavior and then it suddenly stopped working… apple support finally told me it seems like it was related to it being taken off in favor of a bundle with the film included.)
The last episode of Downton Abbey, Season 3 is reasonably close to that.
The article says:
Cajoling the chatelaines of country piles here isn’t as hard as it once was, he says, thanks to the likes of Downton Abbey and Harry Potter. “Everyone wants to be the next Highclere or Alnwick,” he says.
Well thats true, for the very specific subset of properties who want to milk location income. There's another set, who don't pick up the phone.
Really? They want the income. I don't think anyone does it "for the likes" although the post-film-release tail of tourism must have some imputed value.
I don't have a mouldering pile to flog for visuals, but if I did, I'd be filling the moat if the tour buses started driving up afterward. Get off my (1000 year old) lawn.
>Why do tv shows need multiple seasons ?
Because people get comfortable with the characters/storyline and want to see more. Is it really that difficult of a concept?
And I find it amusing that you bring up British TV, because the only shows that I can think of that are super popular and have a worldwide audience are the ones that run for quite a while. The Crown, Downton Abbey, Peaky Blinders, Sherlock. Yeah they do a lot of shorter ones but those barely get out of the country as far as I'm aware.
You should watch the episode of Downton Abbey where Lord Crawley talks about this fellow in America named "Ponzi" who offers these great returns.
I like up next/ watch now on Apple TV
However it is irritating that shows I’ve purchased from the iTunes Store occasionally lose their blessed status§ and I can neither put them in up next nor even have the show’s page open to the episode I last watched. Unless I binge the whole show in one sitting I’m gonna be scrolling horizontally past a lot of episodes every time I sit down to watch.
§ my hypothesis is that it is when the package I bought them in gets taken off iTunes (e.g. I got the complete Downton Abbey, but for a few weeks they were doing a every episode and the movie package and you couldn’t buy just all the seasons together, that one even lost its blessed status while I was watching the show, which was a mystifying experience)
It’s disturbing that historical fiction, especially television, is so often used as evidence of some type of historical precedent. Regardless of the subject’s accuracy, television shows are ultimately written to evoke an emotional response which can’t help but color the viewers perception of the historical events. For instance, in Downton Abbey, part of the drama involves the relationship between the staff and the nobility. The focus on this specific type of relationship may make the viewer believe it was more or less prominent than in reality.
Danish: I watched The Rain, and Chestnut Man is on my list to watch soon. I'm also interested in Elves and The Killing.
Russian: I loved Road To Calvary and To The Lake, and watched some of Better Than Us and liked it.
German: One of my favorite shows of all time is Babylon Berlin :)
Norwegian: Ragnarok is kinda interesting.
Egyptian: Paranormal is good, and only 5 episodes long.
Spanish: Cathedral of the Sea is interesting, and I loved Ministry of Time - although this one vanished from all online streamings :/
Swedish: The Restaurant is available on Sundance/Star or some other channels. Like Downton Abbey. Just watched a couple episodes, but it was nice
French: Lupin and Les Revenants (The Returned) - although I think the second is not on Netflix now, but somewhere else. Watched it many years ago
Belgium: not fantastic, but Thieves of the Wood is just one season long and enjoyable.
Italian: I liked Curon, although it didn't seem to please too many people, I think?
On my list: Trapped, which is Icelandic.
Cheat: Hinterland - it's made in both English and Welsh
Definitely. I'm straight and I love watching Jane Austen, Anne of Green Gables, Musicals, Hallmark, Downton Abbey, Romcom, etc. movies with my wife. But I'd never let any of my male friends know.
Over here, the family which normally eats historical stuff up isn't watching, because we found the script and dialog so poor and the characters so superficial and obvious. Although I'll admit nobody got through the first episode. The Mills and Boon reference might just hit the mark, as we thought this show might be targeting the Downton Abbey audience but is instead aimed at something else. With so much wit to draw on in the related genres, its disappointing they couldn't bring everyone along for the ride.
#BLM has challenged that period in the UK and US. And it was a terrible period, with those vast idyllic country estates being built on the backs of slavery abroad and Enclosure of common land at home.
Slavery is being acknowledged now, but the Enclosures still don't figure in the national narrative.
But Regency Romance has been a money spinning genre for a very long time, and it's not more popular now than it used to be.
Nor is there any evidence of conscious narrative control by editors and publishers. There's far more evidence of that elsewhere - for example in both the mytho-feminist and techno-dystopian ends of contemporary SF.
But it's actually most obvious in period and class-specific movies and soaps, which the UK specialises in, and which are a very different genre to romantic fiction.
Here's the creator of Downton Abbey. He's now working on a US equivalent called - unsurprisingly - The Gilded Age. Could he possibly have an angle to sell?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Fellowes
> the Downton Abbey class
All I find online is references online to some TV show. Is there another term for these people?
Plenty of shows can be good with just one or two seasons, and more is worse. Freaks & Geeks: 1 season, amazing. Ditto UK The Office. Fleabag: 2 short seasons, amazing. The OA: AMAZING first season with a complete coherent ending, then they had to make a bizarre, scattershot second season. Ditto Killing Eve (how many damn times can she get killed lol). Downton Abbey: PLANNED for 3 seasons (pre, during, & post wwI) but it was so popular they just rambled on for ages until it looked like the scripts were being pulled directly from tumblr ("beloved character came back from america! for a wedding episode! plus: PUPPIES!!" literally).
So I don't totally get the "cancelled too soon" argument. The OA should have not run to even 2 seasons.
There's a trend of not producing art or even something original, but producing "content." For example someone asked me if The Mandalorian is good. "It's star wars Content" I replied. "If you like star wars, and want Content, you'll like it." Is the plot novel? Is it original or compelling? No, but boy it's fun to see yoda puppet and more Content from the SW universe you've come to know and love!
A lot of these series may have run their creative course & while megafans want more "Content" it's the same thing as something being cancelled too soon, and most people aren't megafans.
In the show "Downton Abbey", I think in season 1, Maggie Smith (think royal old lady) says, "What's a weekend?"
https://youtu.be/zhfpBW-nUWk
For very different reasons, we all feel the same now :)
But the last two words in your quote are "United States."
PBS, like all distributors, licenses content from producers of content--sometimes PBS is the producer, often it is not--for distribution inside a defined territory.
For example, Doctor Who, Red Dwarf, Downton Abbey, and Are You Being Served are all British TV shows licensed by PBS for distribution in the US. PBS can't stream them worldwide same as the BBC can't show some of the content it distributes outside of the United Kingdom.
TV is pretty much in the same state on Netflix (AU at least). Search for a show and chances are it isn't there, even if it has been in the DVD bargain bin for years. Other shows disappearing (say, Downton Abbey, which was taken off just as my mother in law got to season 5). Lots of new shows a season behind, lots of newish shows never arrive.
Also to request playing Downton Abbey. Although Alexa is sketchy about specific episodes and seasons. And no way can she understand "play the bit where Mary and Matthew are standing outside as it begins to snow"...
I'm a bit surprised by that comment. I actually find Prime to have pretty good content and typically better movies than Netflix (who's movie library has been shrinking pretty drastically over the years).
If you haven't already watched it, I'd highly recommend Season 1 and 2 of "The Expanse" on Prime. There are a lot of pretty great shows on there as long as you don't rely on DC/Marvel shows for all your entertainment. Other shows that are reasonably acclaimed are:
- The Man in the High Castle
- Avatar: The Last Airbender
- The Nightmanager
- Mr. Robot
- Boardwalk Empire
- Downton Abbey
- Sneaky Pete
- Orphan Black
- Dr. Who
- Veep
- The Good Wife
- Transparent
- Hannibal
- Deadwood
- Curb your Enthusiasm
- The Wire
- Six Feet Under
- The Sopranos
There’s an episode of Downton Abbey where it goes the other way.
I think what you're describing is the difference between a soap opera that could, in theory, continue forever, versus a miniseries with a defined start and end.
I'd love to see a snow crash miniseries that covers the snow crash series. I'm not so interested in soap opera style "General Hospital, but in the snowcrash setting"
A mini series would cover the actual snow crash story, which is pretty interesting. On the other hand, a soap opera would be Hiro atarting as a beta orbiter and improbably having a romantic relationship of many ups and downs with YT or perhaps the rat thing becomes a long term pet or companion of YT, Rife would be the bad guy who always escapes to fight again next week, it could be pretty awful indeed.
Another defining characteristic of miniseries vs soap opera is soap operas run out of creativity and crash over time, think of the arc of "breaking bad" or "Downton Abbey" where the first quarter or so used up all the creativity, then a long coast to miserable end. On the other end a miniseries would end like King's "The Stand" or the book version of snow crash, exciting till the very end.
And you need to curate a fistful of routing rules to ensure your streaming traffic doesn't go down the VPN (no VPN provider wants your 20Mbit of Downton Abbey season 5 and you want that traffic to hit the CDN node down the street).
I like stuff like this. Watching Downton Abbey I wondered what the CW was at the start of the first episode: http://blog.jgc.org/2011/11/downton-abbey-series-1-episode-1-morse.html
Didn't he only want encryption without a government backdoor to be illegal?
I don't really think anyone has a problem with giving the latest episodes of Homeland and Downton Abbey to our political elite.
A few years ago I consciously decided that Amazon and Netflix never have new or semi-new content. I've been much happier since. If I care about getting the most popular shows, recent movies, etc and go looking on either I would be (still) constantly disappointed. However now that I assume the content isn't there I discover other things I've never heard of like The Duchess of Duke street, a wonderful period BBC serial from the 70's that I enjoyed almost as much as Downton Abbey.
This is all to say that it is extremely difficult to compare libraries and in my case Amazon has introduced me to more new and interesting TV than Netflix and Netflix has the edge when it comes to movies.
It's not just movies.
I like the TV show Downton Abbey, it airs in the UK in the fall, but not in the US until after the new year - I'm willing to pay money, but cannot until they decide to release it here.
I'm also a fan of old TV shows, most of which I cant buy at any price because they are unwilling to release them at any price.
I'm perfectly content to pay for any of this stuff - but often its not available for purchase, only for pirating.
Same goes for movies - I can buy the DVD for 20 dollars or 'buy' an online copy for 12 dollars (sometimes its the same price as the DVD) - but it's DRM encumbered and I don't get a physical file I can watch anywhere I want - How is that a better value?
What I've found and seen in a handful of studies - is the majority will only turn to pirating after exhausting the legal options to buy a media product, thats been my experience. I'd rather pay a blanket license on my internet bill (say 10%) and be able to download whatever I want from wherever I want, whenever I want. Region Licensing, DRM, strange pricing oddities and the like will keep pirating around for the foreseeable future.
Netflix has some of the best recommendation algorithms, but what do you want to watch right now?
We built Televisor to help you discover new shows based on an existing show you like.
E.g. find me something to watch like The Wire!
Tech: using an item-to-item collaborative filtering approach, whereas most sites like netflix use a user-to-user approach.
Two advantages of item-to-item are that it can start making recommendations right away without you having to input a lot of ratings, and it enables us to give focused recommendations. You might well like Downton Abbey, but perhaps you don't care to watch something like that right now?
> It's all fine and well to say that, but there's actually the meta-problem that Americans don't really want to watch non-Americans
Is a lack of exposure to Canadian television really a problem? Americans listen to quite a bit of Canadian music. And a sizable minority also watch a significant amount of British television (Downton Abbey, tons of Murder-Mystery stuff). Not to mention the huge amount of European literature we're exposed to in our education system or that we read for pleasure (Harry Potter). But that's just western culture. Looking East, you can also look at the huge impact Japanese Animation and Chinese Film has had on our culture as well.
Americans will voraciously consume any media that's 1) Made available to them (Most Canadian TV fails this test) 2) In English.
A series of Downton Abbey costs approx £12MM and reaches 13MM people in the UK alone[1].
The 2hr pilot episode of LOST cost $12MM[2]. Each episode of Game of Thrones has a budget of $6MM[3].
So no, they don't cost a lot of money to make, relatively speaking.
Edit: sources.
[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/8717969/Trench-war-comes-to-Downton-Abbey.html
[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1496199/The-man-who-discovered-Lost-and-found-himself-out-of-a-job.html
[3] http://www.contactmusic.com/news/game-of-thrones-costs-6-million-per-episode_1333082
I did too. I would happily pay a reasonable price for the show, but HBO doesn't offer an option to do that. I cancelled my cable subscription months ago because there's really only a few shows I want to watch and they're on HBO. Paying an extra $50 a month ($600 a year) to watch two shows is ridiculous.
I like the way Downton Abbey was distributed on Amazon. It was, I think, $2 an episode with a small discount if you paid for the whole season at one. New episodes became available to stream as soon as they aired. I'd happily watch every show I like that way If I could.
Thing with Britain is that pretty much everywhere is close to an urban area. The National Grid is truly that: national. Hydro comes online instantly, faster even than gas. It's perfect for these unique-to-Britain spikes.
The interesting parts of this video are the reasons why it's needed to be done manually: catering for spikes in demand which are easy for humans to predict, but very hard to provide for algorithmically. Commonly it's stuff where a significant chunk of the nation is watching the same program on TV. For example, half time in the FA Cup Final; the end of an important episode of a nationally-loved soap opera like Eastenders; the first commercial break in the new series of Downton Abbey, that sort of thing. On those occasions nearly everyone will go to their kitchens and switch on their electric kettles to make tea at the same time. The extra demand of 14 million one kilowatt kettles all going on at once is gigantic and instantaneous, and on a whole different timescale to the kind of day-by-day market pricing and scheduling you're talking about.
I don't think there's any equivalent in the USA at all. There's no spike in demand during the Superbowl half time, for example; the most you'd get is a little bump as everyone opened their fridge doors at once to get another beer. The only similar thing I can think of is the drop in gas pressure you get in a major city on Thanksgiving.
This is where torrents come in handy. It's amazing how easy it is to grab a whole season of a show in 720p (if it's just aired) or 1080p (if the Blu-ray set is out). Yesterday I torrented season 3 of Downton Abbey - it won't even air (in the US) until January! I use Anigrate[0] to keep track of which shows I've watched.
0: http://anigrate.glacicle.org/
I've built lots of little side projects (see http://jgc.org/labs.html) and I have lots of other commitments (like a full time job and I'm not wealthy) and I can tell you a few things that have worked for me:
1. No TV. About four years ago I got rid of my TV. It started as an accident and turned into a habit. Now I watch movies either via a streaming service or DVD. I also watch some TV series (typically I will watch one series at a time, finish it and then move on so there might be one evening a week where I will watch, say, an episode of Downton Abbey). The key here is that I never plonk myself down in front of a TV and channel hop and I'm ruthless about the quality of what I am watching.
2. Null route reddit, Facebook, etc. I realized I was wasting a lot of time on sites that have no actual value other than as a pure distraction. I simply null routed them in my broadband router.
3. Slow down. Some of my projects take forever because I don't have time. I stopped worrying about it and gain satisfaction when I do finish things. Just the other day I was making a nightlight out of a candy can, an old perfume bottle, an old wall wart and some LEDs as a gift for a small child. I realized that I'd started it when $SIBLING was pregnant.
4. Make time in a relationship. It's also important to tell your spouse or whatever that you are going to spend time doing something away from them. That way you can carve out some space (might be just an hour a week) where you do what you want.
5. Parallelize. I tend to make lots of things simultaneously. That way when I've got a spare 20 minutes I can do something on one of them. For example, on the nightlight I recall a couple of months ago realizing I didn't need to go to bed right then and I could spend 15 minutes hot gluing some parts of it together.
PS One more thing... I think some 'distractions' become less important as you get older. In my experience, it's more important when you are younger to know about the latest TV shows, movies, memes etc. than as you get older. You may 'need' to know about them for some forms of social acceptance. As I am no longer young I don't feel the need to 'fit in' as much and so when someone says "Did you see X Factor last night?", I just go "No" and we talk about something else.
PPS And by observing others in the 'maker movement' who have children their solution seems to be to involve their children in the things they want to do. Chris Anderson is a good example of this, his kids seem to always be involved in his projects. I saw a talk where he was discussing 3D printing techniques and a number of his examples were of things he'd made with his kids for them.
For fun... see my decoding of the Morse Code at the start of Downton Abbey: http://blog.jgc.org/2011/11/downton-abbey-series-1-episode-1-morse.html
First of all, here is Downton Abbey Season 2 on Amazon [ http://www.amazon.com/Downton-Abbey-A-House-History/dp/B006MW3VGA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332348783&sr=8-1 ]
I'd like to know the actual stream bitrate he experienced. It's pretty hard for me to empathize without that number.
How lucrative? As lucrative as a £1 rental of each episode of Downton Abbey or Dr. Who available the day after it is broadcast?
Because that's the price point I would pay to watch a current episode.
Come on, Christmas episode of Downton Abbey is a disappointment: annoying dude popping up all the time when Mary was talking to other dude, predictable Bates story, ghost of the dead bride wishing Mary and annoying dude happiness, and most of all, mixed servant-master ball (after two self-served events, because servant had time off)?? Seriously? What's up with that?
I like that some independent films are beginning to branch out in their strategy. For example, one of the best films of the year -- Margin Call -- was released on a variety of streaming services the same day it was available in theaters.
Sometimes I like watching a movie at home, other times I'm looking for a chance to go out. Dates will probably always involve movie theaters for my girlfriend and myself -- even if I have a very nice home setup.
That being said, I think the film industry is in for secular decline due to the compound effects of high quality home theaters with streaming content, some piracy, unrealistically high ticket prices ($32 for two tickets?!) and high quality television production.
I do think the most significant threat is high quality television productions though. Downton Abbey, Mad Men, and many other cable dramas are produced with extremely high artistry both in production and story values. Several times I have found that rewatching these TV series on Netflix has been far more rewarding than the latest 90 minute theater affair.