Downton Abbey - ITV1

Good but a little consfused.
Who was the duke who left at the end and threw the
letters in the fire. What connection was he to the family.
I throught he was the heir until the last scene.
Thank you
 
Anna and Bates had found the box which O'Brien and Thomas had planted in Bates' room and they removed it before Anna said there should be an immediate search.

Neither O'Brien nor Thomas were reprimanded, the box had already been replaced in its proper place, but O'Brien and Thomas now know that Bates (and Anna I guess) had rumbled them.

HTH.

Oh and I found THIS LINK which is quite a good read for fans.
 
No, as mentioned earlier UD is going to be on BBC & set in 1936.. so should look fairly different to this in terms of period style .. that one will be careering up to the 'dark days before WW2' instead. 'We will NOT be having Anderson shelters dug in our kitchen garden' .. et al...
 
That's because of the legal dispute between ITV plc and STV in Scotland.

ITV2-4 are all national channels owned solely by ITV plc who also hold the 'Channel 3' licenses for England and Wales.

The 'Channel 3' (aka ITV1) license though is held by STV in Scotland and UTV in Northern Ireland and for there to be an ITV1+1 channel they would have to reach an agreement between all three license holders. As STV is in dispute with ITV plc over prices and charges being made for programmes, which is why Downton Abbey actually wasn't shown in Scotland, this is taking a while to sort out.

Until that is sorted out, they can't launch the channel or else what would've been shown on ITV1+1 last night in Scotland at 10pm? If you show the Scottish programmes then that means you actually need at least 2 different channels and if you show the England/Wales programme then you really annoy STV.

I'm not saying that there's nothing wrong with ITV - there is and it's still the channel I watch the least amout of (although the Ray Mears programme advertised during Downton Abbey looks like something else I'll be watching) but you can see why something are slightly more complicated for the channel than for other broadcasters like Sky or Channel 5.
 
Definitely not an Ulster Volunteer, not with that accent. :)

And although the IRA itself wasn't founded until 1913 there were various Irish republican groups before then, all with the same aim of getting the British out of Ireland, so I suppose the chauffeur could well be a member of some other group. Of course we could be totally wrong in thinking he might be may turn out to be up to no good; his interest in history and politics might be completely academic and peaceful (I wouldn't bet on it, though). ;)
 
I liked it. I agree that it didnt amaze me but I will without doubt be watching the whole thing.
I love the Bates character and I think he will play out to be very important. I also agree that Maggie Smiths character is similar to other she has played but I really don't care because she plays it so well!
Then I have the love to hate character who are great in there own right. The costumes were fabulous, the story i thought was not slow at all and thought all of the characters were enticing and complex.
All in all, bring on next sunday.
 
In fairness to ITV - and that's not an expression I use very often (if at all! :D) - I think Downton Abbey was commissioned before the BBC revived Upstairs Downstairs. Indeed, there was, I am told, a lot of cloak-and-dagger manoeuvring behnd the scenes so that the BBC's plans couldn't be scuppered.

I suspect that this will be good - and possibly the saviour of ITV Drama, which has badly lost its way in the past few years: for every success (and there haven't been many), there have been scores of flops and there is a wealth of material supposedly so bad that it will never see the light of day (despite having had millions spent on it).

Aside from the wall-to-wall publicity, it's playing straight after The X Factor so it'll do brilliantly. I suspect the only thing the BBC could bring out that might railroad it is Single Father, the David Tennant/Suranne Jones serial. My guess is the BBC is waiting to see how DA does ...

Of course, DA has cost a fortune and only been made possible because the producer, Carnival Films, has US backing. Not all dramas get financial boosts like that and ITV will need more than just one hit if it's really going to restore its credibility ... ;)
 
Nope.. shes shocked them by wearing a very daring outfit!
Theres trouble ahead as Branson fills her head with all his left wing ideas!! :eek:
 
It isn't sad at all. If DA was two hours long I wouldn't complain at all.
I had to come in here. I've been reading comments for weeks and thought it was time to say hello.
The programme does, of course, remind me of Upstairs Downstairs. The scripts have been great and the acting has been some of the best I've seen on TV.
Somebody said that they are now looking at a third series.
 
Yeah, I don't see her as bad, but I don't see her as a great actress, either. To be honest, the rest of the cast, bar the obvious few, aren't exactly great either, but fill out their roles adequately enough. Elizabeth fills out her role just fine and I have no major complaints.



It seems petty when there is no explanation what you find so bad about her accent. It seems to be a complaint that she has an American accent rather than anything else, but maybe I'm wrong and hope to be proved so. I have no problem with her accent and understand that it wasn't unusual that those with wealth spent time abroad and go to know people and lovers beyond these shores.
 
Basically that's all that happened, we didn't actually see him die, so to speak. When it came back from the ad-break, you just saw whats-her-face sneaking in to the maid's room to wake her to tell her he was dead and needed help.

So we're not sure exactly 'when' he died.
 
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