I’ve never been a cool person — not way back when I was younger and not now when I’m close to elderly.  (I’m sure you’re inclined to believe me, even without access to the dorky photos of myself that so far I’ve been able to keep off the Internet . . . mostly.)  So it goes without saying that I don’t keep up with popular culture, and while I may have some familiarity with the contemporary art, music, television, and movie scenes, it’s only through reading reviews online or in periodicals I subscribe to.  So it was rather out of character for me to decide that I would surrender to this particular cultural juggernaut and watch seasons one and two of the Masterpiece Classic series Downton Abbey, written and created by Julian Fellowes and co-produced with Carnival Films.  Thanks to a friend who loaned me the series on digital media, I was able to watch all sixteen episodes on my Netbook, in order, over the past week.  And yes, I’ve become a fan!

For those who disdain anything to do with PBS, here’s a quick summary: Downton Abbey is a “costume drama” which follows the lives and loves of a cast of characters living in an English country house during the Edwardian era, from 1912 through 1920.  It was filmed onsite at Highclere Castle in Hampshire and also on various soundstages in and around London.  I’ve read a few scathing reviews of its non-judgmental depictions of the rich and idle: it is “escapist kitsch” (John Heilpern) which serves the “instincts of cultural necrophilia” and celebrates the “moth-eaten haughtiness of the toffs” (Simon Schama), and the storyline often descends into a “cynical and desperate piece of plot-weaving” (James Fenton).  Well, who cares!  It’s set in a beautiful landscape, the house is spectacular, the clothes and jewelry are gorgeous.  It’s such a wonderful soap opera, with all the necessary stock characters and narrative devices: to date, sudden death after illicit sex, extramarital flings, amnesia, unexpected pregnancy, miscarriage, sibling and servant rivalry and intrigues, black market profiteering, illegitimate child, shotgun marriage, blackmail, elopement, death by arsenic poisoning, and so on.  Events in the wider world also intrude, often forcefully, on the insular lives of this family and their staff: sinking of the Titanic, the Great War, women’s suffrage,  the Irish independence movement, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Spanish Influenza pandemic, and more.

Here’s my take on the first two seasons:

• Favorite character – Lady Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham
• Least favorite – Thomas Barrow
• Character I should like but don’t – Cousin Isobel Crawley
• Character I shouldn’t like but do – Sir Richard Carlisle
• Best new vocabulary word – entail
• Second best – erysipelas
• Oddest pronunciation of an English word – “val-it” for valet
• Best medical procedure – cataract surgery
• Second best – watchful waiting as a treatment for spinal injury
• Favorite scene – Lady Mary Crawley and Cousin Matthew dancing together only days before his wedding (not to her)
• Next favorite – Lady Edith driving a tractor to pull out a tree stump
• Cutest couple – Cora Levinson and Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham
• Next cutest – Anna Smith and John Bates

Season Three, which aired this past fall in the United Kingdom, premieres in the United States on 6 January 2013.  Check your local PBS stations (in my area, WGBY and CPTV) for listings and mark your calendars!