Remains of the Days

The New York Times explores books that explores the world of PBS's hit series Downtown Abbey.

From the article...

Until “Downton Abbey,” I never realized how many of my deepest desires involved ironing. True, it would also be nice to have a great deal of furtive sex with my social inferiors, preferably in crinolines. But at this point, I’d settle for a crisp newspaper.

I know I should feel guilty about my cravings for these things. But that’s the beauty of shows like “Downton Abbey” and its venerable ancestor “Upstairs, Downstairs”: the lives of the gentry are filled with so much intrigue, excruciating protocol and silent suffering that it would be churlish to resent their unimaginably comfortable existence.

And there’s another draw for Americans, particularly in an election year. We continue to labor under the delusion that we live in a class-free society — that social mobility is a birthright, not a remote possibility. If we’re not continually upgrading our circumstances, as Newt Gingrich reminds us, it’s our own damn fault. We are expected to be “Oprah”-ishly self-actuating and self-improving, and only sloth prevents us from achieving spiritual clarity and financial success. How perversely comforting, then, to turn our attention to a world where you will die where you are born and where the heroes are the rare overachievers who work their way up to butler from footman.