Downton Abbey: class and distinction

With its idealised portrayals of aristocracy and social order, ITV’s period drama has become a global phenomenon. As the second season begins, we go behind the scenes to meet its cast and creators In the library at Highclere Castle, the Downton Abbey crew is shooting a scene. Everything is silent, concentrated, intense; then, a pause. “Oh look,” says the cameraman, “there is Lord Carnarvon’s labrador.” We look. There is a labrador, sitting in the garden, in the middle of the shot. So we stop. The first shot in the pre-show credits is actually a labrador’s backside, but I can’t tell if it belongs to this one. He’s the wrong way round. “That dog,” says someone else, “is very well lit.” Downton Abbey was the surprise hit of last autumn – 12 million viewers, on ITV1, bang after The X-Factor. It is the home of the Earl of Grantham, his American heiress wife and his three feuding daughters (King Lear, plus Coronation Street). It is 1912 (Titanic. They lose two relatives.) There is a scary mother-in-law (Maggie Smith, impersonating herself), a middle-class male cousin (due to inherit, boo!) and his scary mother, who predictably hates the other scary mother. The family are soppy High Tories; in Downton Abbey, the class system exists for the benefit of those at the bottom. For instance, the middle-class cousin, Matthew, has to be told off very sternly by Lord Grantham, played by Hugh Bonneville, for not letting his valet dress him. This was, apparently, the equivalent of chopping his balls off. Matthew duly reforms: “Those cufflinks, Molesley. Good choice!” In Downton Abbey, blind cooks are sent to hospital to see again and alcoholic butlers are forgiven, if they chew the scenery enough. Only the evil comedy duo – O’Brien the maid and Thomas the gay footman – disrupt the puddle of happiness. It is a very sanitised portrait of the English aristocracy and it is written by Julian Fellowes, who used to play Earl Kilwillie in Monarch of the Glen, but is now Britain’s chronicler of class, author of the movie Gosford Park and the novel Snobs. It’s amazingly funny. One scene has the countess miscarrying after evil O’Brien leaves soap on the floor; three minutes later, in the strange time-squashed way of mini-series, she is over it. Another scene has the disabled valet/hero Bates, played by Brendan Coyle, kicked to the floor in front of a duke. “All right, Bates?” says Lord Grantham, barely casting a backward glance. “Fine, m’Lud,” says Bates, facedown in gravel. I loved it all. I go to Highclere Castle, home of the 8th Earl of Carnarvon, one day in May to watch shooting of the second series. The set is open to hacks, because it was a worldwide hit, sold to 100 countries, including Sweden and Latvia, so they have nothing to fear. It is a very happy set, because it is a hit. Actors in hairnets eat biscuits; sheep graze out of shot. It is, I suspect, like Dynasty in 1985 – the mini-series centre of the world. Only certain tabloids are banned, in case they print spoilers. (The Daily Mail was so excited it did a massive novelisation, wondering what would happen next.) A photographer was found in the bushes on the first day of filming, in full camouflage. The house is a marvellous, rather neat Gothic castle by Charles Barry, sitting in Capability Brown’s fake hills. The cast rest in a collection of trailers by the house and eat in a pair of red London buses. The centre of operations is a creepy great hall, two storeys high, where all the heads of department, and a man from Australian television – “it’s going to be huge in Australia!” – stare at a tiny screen. Filming is slow, even though the labrador has moved. I sit on the lawn, with Alastair Bruce, the historical adviser. He is very courteous and skittish. I ask him about the infamous Mr Pamuk episode when Lady Mary, the eldest daughter, shagged a visiting Turkish diplomat, who promptly died, and she had to drag his corpse back to his bedroom. Is that likely? “If you go to most parts of the East End of London,” Bruce says, “I doubt life is as busy as it is on EastEnders. It’s a drama. It carried us through another episode. I am a Bruce,” he adds heavily. “I am descended from Robert the Bruce. I have only just got over Braveheart.” There is a noise. It is Fiona, Countess of Carnarvon, a tall blonde woman in a well-ironed shirt. “What are those people doing there?” she shouts very loudly at a group of strangers, who have fallen in among the sheep. The strangers move away. The sheep do not. I stare at Hugh Bonneville. He is in the field too, but shouting at a telephone. He is refusing interviews. I speak to evil footman Thomas, played by Rob James-Collier. The cast, he says, are overwhelmed with tweets. Dan Stevens, middle-class Matthew, got a fan tweet from Jackie Collins. And famous fans turn up. Alan Titchmarsh was here this morning. “I missed him,” says James-Collier. “I wanted to ask him about my lawn but he’s gone.” Lady Carnarvon returns. The trespassers are gone, no shotgun required. The cast call her Lady Carnarvon, which is a bit weird, considering they are here for three months. The Carnarvons are friends with the Felloweses; Julian Fellowes wrote Downton Abbey for this house, she says, after he attended a party there. Her voice is smooth and soaring. “What I find interesting,” she says, “is that it has fascinated, whether it is the taxi driver or the [lord in the] House of Lords. It has cut across a huge segment of English society. Maybe that is because it involves a huge segment of English society.” It is true. Downton Abbey doesn’t have an audience profile; everyone watches it. Her favourite character, she says, “is the house”. She laughs. “You have to live with it and learn it and you grow to love it and as you grow to love it you grow to know it better and as you grow to know it you love it more.” Lady Carnarvon said that without breathing. And if it were a person, who would it be? She laughs again. “My husband.” Next I go to Ealing Studios, where the servants’ quarters and some bedrooms are shot. This seems more relaxed, because there are no aristocrats or labradors. I see the famous kitchen – tiny in a soundstage – the study of Carson the butler and the sitting room of Mrs Hughes the housekeeper. A fake bedroom with a fake view; someone has drawn a heart in the dust. They are shooting a scene in the kitchen, between the non-evil footman William, informally known as cannon-fodder boy, who is in love with the simple but godly kitchen maid Daisy, and Mrs Hughes. Cannon-fodder boy: “I just want a word with Daisy.” Mrs Hughes: “There’ll be plenty of time later.” And that’s it. I talk to Jim Carter, who plays Carson the butler. He has a Mount Rushmore face and deep voice; he is a wonderful actor who stole many scenes in Shakespeare in Love. His job in Downton Abbey is to redefine the human limits of sycophancy and self-sacrifice, and to hover a lot. “Most modern TV,” he says, “is 15 guys in grey suits, saying ‘I’m on it, guv’ and very few women.” He thinks the enormous female cast is one of the reasons for the show’s success. And what did he think when he first saw the script? “Work,” he says. Outside we bump into Brendan Coyle/Mr Bates. Coyle is up for a Bafta on the following Sunday for best supporting actor and he is in massive shades. I think he is wearing a bandana, but I might have dreamt it. His aftershave is a wall. He falls on Carter. “Bafta aren’t sending a car for me,” he says. “Darling,” mutters Carter. Coyle is getting love letters from all over the world. “I have been trying to be a heartthrob for 30 years,” he says. “Then I hit middle age and get a limp.” And it’s done. William Golding was right. On screen, no one knows anything. Day two at Highclere and Fellowes has agreed to see me. He is often portrayed as stuffed with self-love but I think not. His novel Snobs, which is a pretty polemic about how important it is to have a title, screamed class anxiety. He is here with his wife, Emma, a tall woman with scarves knitted through her hair, who is lady-in-waiting to Princess Michael of Kent. She is the closest surviving relative of Earl Kitchener but, because she is a woman, cannot inherit the title. You can argue that Downton Abbey, with its disinherited eldest daughter sub-plot, is partly a howl of pain. I ask her why she thinks the series did so well. I get a brilliant non-answer, delivered very fast: “I don’t know the answer. I think it’s a fantastic thing but I just don’t know the answer. It’s a really interesting question but I simply don’t know. Do you know?” I watch Bonneville, still refusing interviews, striding around dressed as a soldier, while holding a mobile telephone. He is too polite to ignore me though, so every time I pass him he says hello. And so to Lord Carnarvon. I have seen his bedroom actually, because it is part of the Highclere tour. I stood at the doorway, behind a rope, gawping at Lady Carnarvon’s turquoise boots. A woman stuck her head over my shoulder and said, “Yuk – the carpets!” That is, for me, why Downton Abbey works. It’s our ancient national sport – peering at the toffs, with longing and disgust. The house, when Downton Abbey is not shooting, is full of pictures of the Carnarvons, laughing. The earl is short and stocky with a beefy, well-fed face. We sit on his chairs, on his lawn, in the middle of his view. He doesn’t speak exactly. He booms, but he booms fast, so interviewing him is a bit like standing in front of a giant speaker. “I love” – it comes out as LOVE – “Downton Abbey,” he booms. “The story of the earl in particular, Lord Grantham, chimes with my view of long-term stewardship. Julian has portrayed him as the kind boss but he has long-term sense of vision and continuity of the place. Some of the ideas that worry the fictional character are the same for me and his family.” It is true that the Carnarvons need ITV1′s money. They have a fake dead body in the basement, part of the Tutankhamun exhibition, in honour of his ancestor the 5th earl, who found the tomb with Howard Carter. It is open to paying guests. “It has touched a nerve,” he says, “I hate to say it,” but he says it anyway, “of order and structure that people seem to associate with, on whatever level they are looking at, whether it is the people working in the kitchen or the footman, the butler the chauffeur.” I am not sure that is true, but he starts laughing, probably because he is an earl. I don’t blame him. If I were an earl, I’d laugh constantly. At lunch, we go and sit in a bus. One of the actors has a birthday, and a cake is brought for her; she eats it carefully in full Edwardian dress. Fellowes comes over and stares at the cake. “Darling, no actress’s career will survive that,” he says. “How old are you?” She mutters an answer. “Knock a few years off,” he counsels, walks away. Later, I meet him. “The Guardian,” says the PR and I get a theatrical sigh – class war. Are the Granthams based on a particular family? No, he says, but some of the stories are real. The Mr Pamuk story, for instance, is true, told to him by the owner of a “great house”, who read about it in a dead aunt’s diary. Can he tell me who? He gives a giant squeak. “Neow!” But, he adds, “I remember thinking, ‘I bet that ends up in a screenplay,’ and the screenplay” – an actor’s pause – “was Downton!” Predictably, our conversation turns into a veiled argument about class. He’s a Tory peer now, of Cameron’s creation, but his title isn’t hereditary: “We are all lifers,” he says. I admit it is my fault; I started it even though my rage at the portrayal of the Granthams as saintly victims is a huge part of my pleasure. “Now,” he says, “being aristocratic is, if anything, a disadvantage in the workplace. The most employable person is probably a well-educated middle-middle-middle class man or woman. It’s better than being Viscount Someone. I don’t think being a viscount is much of a help.” I disagree. And why is his earl so saintly, an Edwaaardian – that is how Fellowes pronounces it – Jesus Christ? “I feel the bad earl is such a cliche,” he says, “I didn’t want to go there. All aristocrats are selfish and mean – it seems to be so tired.” He stares. “I am sure there have been selfish and mean aristocrats just as there have been selfish and mean shoemakers, but I think the idea that what you are in life determines whether you are a nice person or honest is as meaningless as saying whether you can hold a tune.” Fellowes’ obsession with class seethes through every scene in Downton Abbey. He is a life peer now, of Cameron’s creation, but his ardour is unslaked – Downton Abbey, I am sure, will go a third series, and maybe beyond. But when he tells me about his new coat of arms, and the animals he has stuck on it, I relent slightly, because finally, I understand why he wrote the servants so well. “It has a tortoise,” he says, “because I was the little fat one who got there in the end.” So Fellowes is an outsider too. Of course he is. Downton Abbey Television Period drama Tanya Gold guardian.co.uk

Posted by on September 13, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.