Team Bates!

I now interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you this brief, Boyfriend of the Week-esque fangirl squealfest.

But first... some context. Are you watching Downton Abbey on Masterpiece? Why not? Because I'm here to tell you...

YOU SHOULD BE.

No offense (or as the Brits say... offence?) To the folks at PBS, but the original ITV trailer is vastly more compelling:

 

Kilwillie getting his kilt on!

This isn't your Grandma's Masterpiece Theatre. Written by Julian Fellowes (who wrote the equally awesome Gosford Park and was, once upon a time, Kilwillie on Monarch of the Glen), Downton is an epilogue-of-sorts to another Masterpiece, The Buccaneers.

Based on an unfinished novel by Edith Wharton, the eponymous title characters of that series are "nouveau riche" American girls on a quest to legitimize their money by forging mutually beneficial matches with land rich, cash poor British aristocrats.

In Downton, Elizabeth McGovern plays Cora, Countess of Grantham, who in her youth was just such a "buccaneer" and is now the happily married daughter of three grown daughters. But no son, which, in the primogeniture-happy land of the English aristocracy, is a bit of a problem. It's even more of a problem because the sizable chunk of change she brought to the union has been, unfortunately, entailed to the estate, meaning that it will go, not to her daughters, but to the next Count of Grantham. And after an unfortunate incident involving a White Star ocean liner and an iceberg, the next Count of Grantham is a third cousin who happens to be a staunchly middle class solicitor from Manchester.

In Downton Abbey there is an upstairs and a downstairs, whose intersecting lives form much of the drama.  But despite the obvious correlation to the original Upstairs, Downstairs (which also, as I recall, featured a story line centering on Titanic - upper crust Edwardian society was nothing if not insular), Downton Abbey most reminds me of Manor House; the level of intrigue is on par with the best of reality television.

But to get back to the promised squealing, every Count needs a mysterious valet, right?

Clive Owen in Gosford Park

Brendan Coyle in North and South

Bates (Brendan Higgins) and Anna (Joanne Froggatt) share a moment.

Half an hour later....

Sorry... I'm not sure if that was appropriately squealy; should have used more exclamation points.
I'll try again. Dear Brendan Coyle: You are awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!