BuzzFeed: "Downton Abbey Season 5 Begins With A Jolt"

Julian Fellowes’ costume drama begins its fifth year with a slew of domestic intrigues in place, as well as some new tensions. WARNING: Minor spoilers ahead!

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "Downton Abbey Season 5 Begins With A Jolt," in which I review the fifth season premiere of Downton Abbey, which launches on ITV in the U.K. (Sorry, U.S. readers!)

Period drama Downton Abbey had begun to show signs of wear and tear, particularly in its fourth season, where the creakiness of the subplots began to match that of the house’s ancient stairs.

It was, simply put, not the best year for the drama, which had come off the narrative highs of its third season, including the highly emotional deaths of two linchpin characters, Matthew Crawley (Dan Stevens) and Lady Sybil (Jessica Brown Findlay). But, in its fourth, Downton sagged into overt melodrama with storylines involving murder, blackmail, and the shocking and highly controversial rape of Anna Bates (Joanne Froggatt). For a series that once had such great promise and potential, it felt like the life had been sucked out of the show somewhat as it was forced to restructure in light of those two high-profile departures.

Resurrecting my crackpot theory that odd-numbered seasons of Downton Abbey are far superior to their even-numbered counterparts (I’m looking at you, Season 2!), the fifth season opener of Julian Fellowes’ period drama — which airs Sept. 21 on ITV in the U.K. and Jan. 4, 2015, on PBS’s Masterpiece in the U.S. — offers a reinvigorated Downton, one full of downstairs intrigues and domestic drama. The first episode back is a bit of a whirling dervish: There are so many subplots that it’s almost impossible to account for all of them.

But rather than feel overwhelming, there’s a particularly pleasing rhythm to all of this narrative dance work, with scenes that are short on time but long on significance. Long-simmering plots come to the boil. The ongoing love triangle between Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery), Lord Gillingham (Tom Cullen), and Charles Blake (Julian Ovenden) twists in a most unexpected direction, at least by the standards of the time. (It’s 1924, after all.) The relationship between James (Ed Speleers) and Lady Anstruther (a particularly aptly cast Anna Chancellor) is explored with clarity, humor, and a potential resolution. Isobel (Penelope Wilton) and Violet (Maggie Smith) are once again at odds — their temporary cease-fire marred by a new twist in their rivalry, this time over Isobel’s romantic prospects.

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BuzzFeed: "18 Gasp-Worthy Secrets About Downton Abbey Season 5 From The Cast"

Michelle Dockery, Allen Leech, Laura Carmichael, and Joanne Froggatt share details about the new season with BuzzFeed. Warning: SPOILERS ahead if you haven’t finished Season 4.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "18 Gasp-Worthy Secrets About Downton Abbey Season 5 From The Cast," in which I interview the cast of Downton Abbey about what's coming up on the fifth season of the British costume drama.

1. Reinvention is very big this season.

Judging from how often word “reinvention” itself came up among the cast members.
“There’s big social change in this season,” Michelle Dockery, who plays Lady Mary, told BuzzFeed. “You can tell by the clothes, it’s very, very modern. And Mary really embraces those changes. Reinvention is a good word.”

That spirit of renewal is perhaps nowhere more apparent than within the character of Lady Mary herself. “It’s the new Mary,” she said. “Because she’s through the grief now and she’s moving on with her life and embracing a social life again, and exploring things romantically and also taking on more responsibility with the estate. She’s really kind of growing up and growing into a different person this time.”

2. But that doesn’t mean Lady Mary will be choosing a new husband any time soon.

Yes, that means that the love triangle is still in full force and both Charles Blake (Julian Ovenden) and Anthony Gillingham (Tom Cullen) are back in Season 5. “They are on the scene,” Dockery said. “Mary doesn’t settle with anyone any time soon; she was never going to. That’s important, not just for the story, but for the audience, because Matthew [Dan Stevens] was such a well-loved character, and Dan, of course, so you can’t really have Mary marry someone immediately. She’s just feeling her way through things, really. She’s still being very impulsive. I love that about her, that she doesn’t always think things through. She’ll make a decision and she goes with it, and then often, she’ll regret it afterwards or think, in hindsight, she could have dealt with it better. I love that about her. It’s a very human quality.”


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BuzzFeed: "7 Reasons Call The Midwife Is One Of The Best Shows On Television"

Besides the number of times this period drama makes you sob like a baby.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "7 Reasons Call The Midwife Is One Of The Best Shows On Television," in which I extol the virtues of Call the Midwife, which returns for its third season on Sunday, March 30.

The third season of BBC’s Call the Midwife — which wrapped up last month in the U.K. and begins on March 30 on PBS in the States — attracted an audience of more than 10 million viewers when it aired across the Atlantic, a figure that puts it on nearly equal footing with Downton Abbey. But that series gets far more attention than this subtle and superb period drama.

Set in 1950s East End London and based on Jennifer Worth’s memoirs, Call the Midwife tracks the lives of a group of young midwives and the sisterhood of nuns with whom they work at Nonnatus House. Babies are born, labors — both real and figurative — undertaken, and love blossoms and fades. It is an extraordinary show about birth and death and what comes in between. As written by Heidi Thomas and her talented staff, Call the Midwife manages to be both warm and profound in equal measure, opening a window to a time long gone yet offering a glimpse into the eternal and the transitory. It’s tea cozy television with a very deep soul.

But if you haven’t yet watched Call the Midwife (or have already fallen in love with its easy charms), here are seven reasons why it is worth watching. (Warning: Minor spoilers ahead.)

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BuzzFeed: "Season 4 Of Downton Abbey Is A Bit Of A Downer"

Has the bloom gone off this English rose? Warning: Minor spoilers ahead!

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "Season 4 Of Downton Abbey Is A Bit Of A Downer," in which I review the fourth season of Downton Abbey.

After the shocking events of last season’s bloody finale — in which heir Matthew Crawley (Dan Stevens) was unceremoniously killed off — Season 4 of Downton Abbey, which returns to PBS’ Masterpiece on Sunday, Jan. 5, sees an awful lot of restructuring in the wake of not one but two major character deaths. Yes, there are plots aplenty for both upstairs and downstairs as the series is now firmly entrenched in the changing times of the 1920s, when estates like Downton were in even greater jeopardy. When the series returns, the relics of privilege and luxury teeter unsteadily on a knife’s edge as the world advances without them. (There is an electric whisk in the kitchen!)

Season 4 of Julian Fellowes’ Downton Abbey picks up six months after Matthew’s death and finds a family deep within the throes of mourning: Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) is a ghostly presence in the household, a black-clad widow staring out the window with unspeakable loss weighing on her slight shoulders. And the rest of the Crawleys are concerned about her, plagued by the question of whether to shield her from further hurt or bring her back to the world once more. While Mary and her also widowed brother-in-law, Fenian chauffeur-turned-Crawley hanger-on Tom Branson (Allen Leech) are thrown together in grief, their storyline oddly splinters after a few episodes. While I’m glad to see that the two aren’t forced into a ghastly romantic subplot together, as some fans may have hoped, there’s something strange about the way their familial plot fizzles out.

This is true largely of Season 4 as well. Numerous plots are either resolved far too quickly or not at all, and slight mysteries are left dangling endlessly into Season 5.

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BuzzFeed: "Sherlock Is Back From The Dead And Better Than Ever"

The hotly anticipated British mystery drama returns with the revelation of just how Sherlock Holmes faked his death two years ago. Warning: Minor spoilers ahead!

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "Sherlock Is Back From The Dead And Better Than Ever," in which I review the spectacular third season opener of Sherlock ("The Empty Hearse"), which airs Jan. 1 in the U.K. and on Jan. 19 on PBS' Masterpiece.

Just how did Sherlock Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch) fake his own death?

When Sherlock picks up — two years after the action of the 2012 Season 2 finale, “The Reichenbach Fall” — the facts surrounding how the master sleuth pulled off the seemingly impossible are kept firmly under wraps for much of the ingenious 90-minute season opener, “The Empty Hearse” (which airs Jan. 1 on BBC One in the U.K. and on Jan. 19 on PBS’s Masterpiece).

This is not to say that viewers are denied a revelatory sequence in which the truth about just how Sherlock faked his own death is laid out. The taut sequence that reveals how he achieved such a feat is both simple, yet cunningly complex (not to mention quite spectacular), though I won’t spoil the outcome for anything on this Earth. However, the episode’s writer Mark Gatiss (who once again pulls double duty as Sherlock’s glacially cold brother Mycroft) rather smartly withholds the reveal until “The Empty Hearse” is almost concluded, creating an ongoing mystery that continues to swirl around the minds of both the viewers and several characters within Sherlock itself.

And throughout “The Empty Hearse,” those characters fantasize about just how Sherlock may have pulled off the stunt of faking his death, though the fantasies they depict often say more about the characters themselves than they do about the great detective. Forensic tech Anderson (Jonathan Aris) sees Sherlock as a swashbuckling daredevil, crashing through windows and planting kisses on co-conspirator Molly Hooper (Louise Brealey), a fantasy that sets up Holmes as someone inherently larger than life. (Which makes sense given the obsessive Carrie Mathison-style wall of clues he’s created in his flat.) Another character sees the entire exploit as a romantic bluff by Sherlock and Moriarty (Andrew Scott), a fantasy that plays to a very particular subset of Sherlock slash fiction.

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BuzzFeed: "Your Next Television Obsession Is French Supernatural Thriller The Returned"

You won’t just become addicted to Sundance Channel’s French-language drama about people returning from the dead; it will haunt your dreams.

"Your Next Television Obsession Is French Supernatural Thriller The Returned"

In the opening sequence of extraordinary French thriller The Returned, a yellow butterfly, pinned and placed in a display case, mounted on a wall, unexpectedly flutters back to life and smashes through its glass prison. It’s an enigmatically beautiful moment, and an apt metaphor for the overall premise of The Returned (which premieres Oct. 31 at 9 p.m. on the Sundance Channel), a collision between the worlds of the living and the dead that leaves both shattered.

Created by Fabrice Gobert (who shares directing duties with Frédéric Mermoud) and based on a 2004 film of the same name, The Returned (in French, Les Revenants) is unlike anything else on television, on either side of the Atlantic, an atmosphere-laden and character-driven drama that deftly blends supernatural horror, psychological terror, and familial tragedy. (If you’d like some sort of signposts into this unknown territory, I’d argue that The Returned is The Walking Dead multiplied by The 4400 plus Twin Peaks and divided by In the Flesh and, say, Anthony Minghella’s Truly, Madly, Deeply.)

The series — which has been renewed for a second season that will air in November 2014 on Canal+ in France —depicts what happens when the dead return to a French village, seemingly unaged, and the lives of those forever altered by the death of a loved one and their return. (You might be asking, Isn’t this similar to that ABC midseason show Resurrection, which is based on Jason Mott’s novel The Returned and is about what happens to a town when the dead return? While both have resounding similarities — the dead when they come back haven’t aged and seem to be alive; there is a seemingly mute boy at the center of each show; the time between death and return is different for each character, etc. — they aren’t directly related. An English language version of Les Revenants is already in the works as well for U.K. television under the aegis of Shameless and State of Play creator Paul Abbott.)

Each of the eight episodes that comprise The Returned’s first season focuses on the death of a specific character: morose teen Camille (Yara Pilartz), who was killed three years earlier in a horrific bus accident that killed 37 of her classmates as well and splintered her grieving family; musician Simon (Pierre Perrier), who mysteriously dies on his wedding day, leaving behind a pregnant fiancée in Adèle (Clotilde Hesme); eerily silent child “Victor” (Swann Nambotin), whose presence seems to presage doom and who has an ability to conjure a person’s darkest fear. Oh, and did I mention that one of the dead is a cannibalistic serial killer named Serge (Guillaume Gouix) who likes to repeatedly stab women in a subterranean tunnel and then eat their internal organs? One of his victims, stoic nurse Julie (Céline Sallette), survived Serge’s final attack seven years earlier before he seemingly vanished, though she has been haunted by the notion that she could come face to face with him again. Especially when a local waitress, Lucy Clarsen (Ana Girardot), is stabbed in the same tunnel as Julie…

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BuzzFeed: "25 Secrets About Downton Abbey Season 4"

The cast and crew spill some details about what’s coming for the Crawleys and their servants. Julian Fellowes’ British period drama returns to ITV in September in the U.K. and to PBS’ Masterpiece on Jan. 5 in the U.S. Warning: minor spoilers ahead!

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "25 Secrets About Downton Abbey Season 4," in which I sit down with executive producer Gareth Neame and cast members Michelle Dockery, Laura Carmichael, Phyllis Logan, and Joanne Froggatt to glean some details about what's going on in Season 4 of Downton Abbey.

When Downton Abbey returns with its fourth season, it’s February 1922 and six months will have passed since the death of heir Matthew Crawley (Dan Stevens) — who perished after driving off the road shortly after the birth of his son, George — and the Crawley household is still in a state of mourning. But, fortunately, the mourning period won’t last all season, for life must go on for Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) and the other members of her well-heeled aristocratic clan.
“Series 4 brings in humor, drama, grief, romance, backbiting between characters, and underhand happenings,” series star Joanne Froggatt — who plays lady’s maid Anna Bates — told BuzzFeed. “It’s got everything in there.”

Season 4 will also have to reassure the audience after the shocking deaths of not one, but two beloved characters, which came on the heels of the horrors of World War I and the Spanish flu in the second season. The show’s executive producer Gareth Neame said Season 4 contained the “spirit of rebirth,” both for the Crawleys and for the Julian Fellowes-created British period drama itself. “Clearly, there’s a change of direction,” said Neame, speaking to BuzzFeed earlier this week. “In Mary’s life particularly, because she is so much a central figure in the show and Mary and Matthew were so central. When we rejoin the show, several months have passed, just as several months have passed in real life for the audience.”

So what lies ahead in the fourth season of Downton Abbey? BuzzFeed spoke with Neame as well as cast members Michelle Dockery, Laura Carmichael, Joanne Froggatt, and Phyllis Logan to glean some secrets about what will happen in the halls of Downton.

1. When Season 4 begins, Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) is in a fragile state.

“Since Matthew’s death, Mary is really in such a living death at this point,” Neame told BuzzFeed. “She has completely given up on life and one of the central thrusts of the new season is really the rebirth of Mary and the way that her family and all the staff encourage her to turn back to life and find a new reason to carry on… As a beautiful, highly eligible young widow and mother of a baby son, there is a huge amount of potential of new stories for her.”

It’s a sentiment that’s echoed by many cast members as well. “At the start of Series 4, Mary is in a place of trapped grief,” Froggatt said. “She can’t bring herself back into the present. She’s just very closed off in her own pain. And so Anna is walking a bit of a tightrope with Mary to start off, because she sees that but, for the sake of her son George, she needs to come back into the present and start interacting with her child and not closing herself off from the world. She has to start to move forward in a way. It’s very difficult for Anna because she can only really hint at that to Lady Mary; she’s still within the constraints of being her servant and not allowed to overstep the mark.”

Dockery herself sees Matthew’s death as regressing Mary in many ways. “She’s reverted to that very cold exterior that she had in Series 1 and she says at one point that she’s not sure who she’s most in mourning for: Matthew, or the person that she was when she was with him,” Dockery told BuzzFeed. “That saddens her even more because she’s lost who she was; he brought out that sensitive, vulnerable side to her, the much more caring and loving side, and now it’s shattered. She had everything at the end of Series 3: she finally got her man, she gave birth to a son, perfectly wrapped up the legacy of the Granthams, and then she didn’t even realize that… her life had been turned upside down.”

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BuzzFeed: "Broadchurch: Olivia Colman Is Britain’s 'Finest Export'"

The BAFTA-winning actress stars opposite David Tennant in BBC America’s spellbinding murder mystery Broadchurch. She talks about jumping from comedy to drama, Peep Show, working with David Tennant and Matt Smith, and more.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "Broadchurch: Olivia Colman Is Britain’s 'Finest Export,'" in which I interview the incomparable Olivia Colman, who stars in the sensational British murder mystery Broadchurch — which heads Stateside to BBC America on Wednesday evening — about Peep Show, David Tennant, ricocheting between comedy and drama, and more.

Olivia Colman is late to our interview.

A nervous publicist explains that the star of Broadchurch, which plunged the U.K. into a full-blown obsession when it aired earlier this year, is making her way on foot to our location, deep within the caverns of the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills. (Colman is slated to appear to next day on a panel for BBC America at the Television Critics Association summer press tour.) When Colman does turn up, she’s barefoot, clutching a pair of wickedly high-heeled Louboutins in her arms and apologizing for her tardiness.
Apparently, the BAFTA winner — who stars opposite David Tennant in BBC America’s murder mystery Broadchurch, which begins Wednesday, August 7 (it aired earlier this year to huge ratings on ITV in the U.K.), and can be seen in everything from Tyrannosaur to Peep Show — can do comedy and drama well, but finds walking in heels a real challenge. (It may be her rare flaw, in fact.) Hugs, however, are something she excels at. Colman and Doctor Who star Matt Smith embrace briefly as she passes by him, shoes in tow; she appeared in Smith’s very first Doctor Who episode (“The Eleventh Hour”).

“She’s amazing,” Smith tells me. “She’s great fun. Especially when you go and have a beer with her. She’s a riot.” And no one, I say, can cry like her. “Yeah, no one! And as a comedy actress as well, she’s incredible. She’s one of our finest exports.”

Colman is, in fact, a cottage industry unto herself, turning out highly nuanced performances from both ends of the comedy/drama divide. The Telegraph called her “the next Judi Dench.” Meryl Streep referred to her as “divinely gifted.” But Colman doesn’t wear those accolades comfortably. Bring them up and she laughs uneasily.

“It all seems a bit silly, doesn’t it? I did rewind the Meryl bit quite a few times,” Colman says, shifting in her chair. “That was amazing. I don’t know. It’s lovely and I’m aware that I’m lucky and there are many, many people who can do what I do. I’ve just been given an opportunity to do it, and I’m very grateful. It might all dry up. I’m making hay.”

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BuzzFeed: "Peter Capaldi Named As The New Star Of Doctor Who"

Yep, it's true. After much speculation, BBC has finally named Number Twelve. Peter Capaldi will take over as as the Doctor from Matt Smith, who will depart the role in this year’s Christmas Special.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest post, "Peter Capaldi Named As The New Star Of Doctor Who," about the casting of Peter Capaldi as Number Twelve.

The TARDIS is getting a new inhabitant in the form of 55-year-old veteran actor Peter Capaldi.
After weeks of speculation (and much interest from London bookies), BBC finally announced on Sunday just who will be taking over as the Time Lord at the center of long-running British science fiction drama Doctor Who once current series star Matt Smith leaves in December’s Christmas Special.

“The decision is made and the time has come to reveal who’s taking over the TARDIS,” executive producer and head writer Steven Moffat had teased ahead of the broadcast. “For the last of the Time Lords, the clock is striking twelve.”
The news of Capaldi being cast as the Doctor was announced on a live BBC One special, Doctor Who Live: The Next Doctor, which lifted the shroud of secrecy surrounding the highly anticipated casting news. The live special featured live and pre-recorded appearances from Smith, Peter Davison (the Fifth Doctor), and Colin Baker (the Sixth Doctor), as well as Bernard Cribbins and former companions Katy Manning (Jo Grant), Anneke Wills (Polly), Janet Fielding (Tegan), and Bonnie Langford (Mel). Asked for three words to describe the new Doctor, Moffat said, “Different from Matt.”

Capaldi is most definitely different to Smith — at least in age, as like Smith, he’s male and white. (For those hoping that the Doctor would regenerate into a woman, you’ll have to wait. It won’t be happening on Moffat’s watch, as he oddly made a joke about it not happening anytime soon.)

Capaldi walked out on stage (during what appeared to be a Time Tunnel-like laser light show) to much fanfare from the audience. “It’s so wonderful to not keep this secret any longer, but it has been absolutely fantastic in its own way,” said Capaldi. “So many wonderful things have happened. For a long time, I couldn’t tell my daughter, who would be looking on the internet and seeing that so-so should be Doctor Who and so-so should be Doctor Who and they never mentioned me.”

As for preparing for the role, Capaldi said that it was a bit of a challenge, though he has been a huge fan of the Time Lord for most of his life.

“It was quite hard because, even though I’m a lifelong Doctor Who fan, I haven’t played the Doctor since I was nine on the playground,” joked Capaldi, who said that he missed the call from his agent with the news of his casting (he was filming BBC’s Three Musketeers in Prague). “She rang me up and said, ‘Hello, Doctor!’ and I just started laughing and I’ve been laughing ever since.”

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BuzzFeed: "The Doctor Is In: Matt Smith On Leaving Doctor Who, A Female Doctor, And More"

The 30-year-old actor will depart cult British sci-fi drama Doctor Who after this year’s Christmas Special. Here's what he told BuzzFeed about his decision to leave, the possibility of a female Doctor, stealing socks, and more.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest story, "The Doctor Is In: Matt Smith On Leaving Doctor Who, A Female Doctor, And More," in which I sit down with Doctor Who star Matt Smith to discuss his decision to leave the British science fiction drama, the possibility of a female Doctor, and what's next for him.

Matt Smith is wearing bright turquoise socks. The 30-year-old star of Doctor Who is lolling around on a leather couch deep within the cavernous confines of the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles, a day before he’s set to appear on a panel celebrating the 50th anniversary of the British science fiction drama at the Television Critics Association summer press tour.

When I draw attention to his socks (they coincidentally match the shirt I’m wearing), Smith proudly draws up his trouser leg to take a closer look. “They’re a similar color to your shirt!” he says, enthusiastically in a fashion not unlike the Doctor himself. “I always steal a pair of socks on every photo shoot I do.” He pauses. “It’s my thing.”

Smith looks drastically different from his on-screen persona as the Doctor, having transformed himself to play a tough guy in Ryan Gosling’s directorial debut, How to Catch a Monster, which will be Smith’s first appearance after he wraps up his tenure on Doctor Who later this year. There’s the 50th anniversary special airing November 23rd (on BBC One in the U.K. and BBC America in the U.S.) and then the Christmas Special, where the Doctor will regenerate into… Well, who knows who he’ll become yet? Neither Smith nor executive producer Steven Moffat are giving us any clues about which actor (or actress?) might step into the role and play Number Twelve. What follows is an edited transcript of the conversation between Smith and BuzzFeed.

How liberating is it to leave behind that Doctor Who coif and the bowties?

MS: I’ve got to be honest, it is quite liberating. Although I’m putting Miracle-Gro on it because I need to get it back for September to go and shoot the regeneration [scene]. But it is freeing, shaving it off. Walking round at Comic-Con, people didn’t recognize me as much. Just generally, people recognize me much less, and that’s quite nice as well, because you can be more anonymous.

It helps when you’re walking around Comic-Con wearing a Bart Simpson mask. Was that surreal, walking around surrounded by some of your biggest fans?

MS: I went up to the BBC America booth and I tried to talk to people, but I put on an American accent. I was like, “Hey, how’s it going, man? I like your TARDIS thing,” and whatever and no one wanted to talk to me! There was one girl in particular who had a backpack on with Tom Baker-y straps like a scarf. And I was really trying to talk to her and she was just not interested.

At what point did you know that it was time to move on from Doctor Who?

MS: It’s something that I was considering for a while. It’s one of those jobs where there’s never a right time, because part of you just wants to do it forever. It’s such wonderful storytelling and it’s the most wonderful character and it’s the most wonderful cast and crew, and so much about it is right. I think you have to keep challenging yourself and keep challenging the show. For the show, it’s the right time and it will re-galvanize it. The show will get bigger and better, and I’ll become a fan and look back on my time and just go, “I’ve had the most wonderful journey.”
What was the conversation like that you had with Steven Moffat about your decision?
MS: To be honest with you, it’s, that’s something that I’d like to keep private, because it’s a private conversation and Steven is a dear friend of mine. It was something that we talked about a while ago as well, in rough terms. In my head I just knew that, after the 50th anniversary, I’d look at retiring the bow tie, as it were.

But Steven was supportive, I imagine.

MS: Yeah, yeah, he was. But obviously as well, it’s one of those things. It wasn’t easy for both of us because we’ve worked together for three years, and creatively and personally, we’re close. Part of me would have liked to have continued and finished the journey with him, but also, for me, I just felt like it was time for a change of lifestyle.

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The Daily Beast: "Oxford's No. 1 Sleuth: Inspector Lewis's Kevin Whately on Morse, John Thaw, and the End of the Series"

Kevin Whately has been playing gruff, sensible detective Robbie Lewis on Morse and Lewis for 26 years. I speak to him about the possible end of the Oxford copper.

At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Oxford's No. 1 Sleuth: Inspector Lewis's Kevin Whately on Morse, John Thaw, and the End of the Series," in which I speak with Kevin Whately, star of Inspector Morse and Lewis (which returns to PBS' Masterpiece Mystery on Sunday) about playing Robbie Lewis for 26 years, whether this is the end for the Oxford-set drama, and what's next.

Inspector Lewis is due for a vacation.

After more than 20 years playing Detective Inspector Robert “Robbie” Lewis, actor Kevin Whately has earned a well-deserved break from investigating murders beneath the Oxford spires. Introduced in Inspector Morse’s first episode (“The Dead of Jericho”), Whately’s Robbie Lewis was the Geordie sidekick of the late John Thaw’s erudite and perpetually cranky Inspector Morse before becoming the lead of his own spinoff, Lewis.

While Whately has a slew of roles on his résumé—he also starred in British drama Peak Practice and comedy Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, as well as countless other projects, including The English Patient—Robbie Lewis is the role still most closely associated with the 62-year-old actor. He has played the gruff detective from 1987 to 2000 on Morse and from 2006 to the present on Inspector Lewis.

The much loved show returns for its sixth (or seventh, if you’re going by the ITV ordering), and possibly final, season on PBS’ Masterpiece Mystery on Sunday, a season that finds Lewis and his partner, Cambridge-educated Detective Sergeant James Hathaway (Laurence Fox), grappling with change, uncertainty, and possibly even a happy ending of sorts.

The Daily Beast caught up with Whately earlier this month during his protracted hiatus from Inspector Lewis to discuss the challenges of playing a role for more than two decades, the romance between Robbie Lewis and medical examiner Laura Hobson (Clare Holman), why he tried to turn down Lewis, and what’s next for the Oxford sleuth.

You've been extremely outspoken about your need for a potential hiatus from the series. What are the challenges of playing Robbie Lewis for 26 years?

Kevin Whately: Every now and then, you suddenly realize you've asked the same question probably 50 times before: “Where were you last night?” We have wonderful writers, but you can't think of a different way to do it, or a different corner to come out of, and you do need a break. I've just recently worked out that I haven't had a summer off for 31 years, which is half my life. So I want a year off for real. And it happened to coincide with Laurence [Fox] saying he wanted to come over and do pilot season over here, but he's actually doing a lot of fathering instead.

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The Daily Beast: "Emmy Awards’ Dark Horse Nominee: Tatiana Maslany of Orphan Black"

If you didn’t watch BBC America’s clone drama Orphan Black, you missed one of the year’s best dramatic performances. My take on why Tatiana Maslany deserves an Emmy nod.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Emmy Awards’ Dark Horse Nominee," in which I offer a look at one of the year's best television performances, that of Tatiana Maslany on BBC America's Orphan Black, and state why this dark horse deserves at least an Emmy nomination.

If you don’t regularly tune in to shows about global conspiracies, illegal medical research, and genetically identical clones, you may be forgiven for not watching Orphan Black, the serpentine Canadian-American science fiction drama that wrapped up its first season earlier this month on BBC America. (Season 2 will air in 2014.)

But not watching this compelling and surprisingly emotional cult drama—created by Graeme Manson and John Fawcett—means that you missed out on one of the year’s most intense and astonishing television performances. In Orphan Black, Tatiana Maslany delivers a daredevil turn, playing no less than seven different roles, each one with their own mannerisms and secrets.

It’s no surprise that Maslany, a 27-year-old Canadian actress, has already been racking up accolades for her electrifying acting. On Monday, she was awarded the Critics’ Choice Television Award for Best Lead Actress in a Drama Series and, on the same day, nominated for a Television Critics Association Award for Individual Achievement in Drama. While roughly two weeks remain before Emmy nomination ballots are due back from voting members, Maslany is already receiving buzz as a dark horse contender for a Best Actress spot. And with good reason, as Maslany’s versatile performance in Orphan Black would be a staggering feat for a veteran actor, much less for one recently starting out.

Maslany plays Sarah Manning, a sharp-tongued British grifter who sees an escape from her problems when a woman—one who looks identical to her—jumps in front of a moving subway train. Desperate to escape her abusive drug dealer boyfriend Vic (Michael Mando) and reclaim her young daughter, Sarah assumes the identity of her lookalike, slipping into her life in order to start a new one. But the dead woman—Beth Childs—is a cop under investigation for the shooting death of a civilian, and by assuming her identity, Sarah is drawn into a conspiracy that reveals her own true nature: that she and Beth are clones, closely monitored by their creators, and that someone is trying to kill them off. (The result is something akin to Ringer crossed with Krzysztof Kieslowski’s La double vie de Véronique with some Alias thrown in for good measure.)

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The Daily Beast: "The Dark Lure of Gillian Anderson's The Fall"

BBC Two’s The Fall, starring Gillian Anderson and Jamie Dornan, debuts on Netflix on May 28. My take on Anderson and Dornan’s searing performances and why you need to watch.

At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "The Dark Lure of Gillian Anderson's The Fall," in which I review BBC Two's serial killer drama The Fall, which stars Gillian Anderson and which makes its Stateside debut next week on Netflix.

It is virtually impossible to talk about The Fall—BBC Two’s addictive and provocative serial killer drama, which begins streaming stateside on Netflix on May 28—without mentioning the ghost in the room: Prime Suspect.

The allusion to Prime Suspect, a massive hit on both sides of the Atlantic, is well founded. For one, The Fall is the closest that television has come to capturing the taut alchemy of Prime Suspect: part police chase, part psychological portrait of the hunted and the hunter. At the time of its premiere in 1992, Prime Suspect captured the institutional misogyny of the Metropolitan Police and placed at its center Helen Mirren’s Jane Tennison, a knife-sharp detective who wasn’t content to hover at the edges of a “man’s world.” Over the seven seasons that Mirren portrayed Jane, viewers came to see her as a brilliant, if flawed, protagonist, who somehow remained tethered to the glass ceiling that she had shattered and who turned to drink and sex to dull the loneliness of her life.

In The Fall, we see both the hard road that Mirren’s Tennison had to walk but also the women—both fictional and real—who followed Tennison’s path in the 22 years since she first appeared on screen. Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson, played here with precision and grit by Gillian Anderson (The X-Files), joins this tradition as a confident and headstrong copper who flits between steely logic and rational detachment. To call her emotionless is to miss the point: Anderson’s Stella has real and vivid emotions, often deeply so, but she’s far more calm and rational than her male colleagues, a capricious and sensitive lot who can dodge bullets but can’t avoid wounded egos.

Created by Allan Cubitt (who not surprisingly cut his teeth on Prime Suspect 2), The Fall is a top-flight mystery that taps into political tensions in Northern Ireland and the troubling undercurrent of violence against women. Stella Gibson, a Metropolitan Police detective from London, arrives in Belfast to conduct a 28-day review of a high-stakes investigation into the murder of a professional woman who was found strangled in her home, her body artfully posed in her bed. What Stella—an out-of-place Englishwoman—discovers is that Belfast is far from peaceful, with the locals’ simmering rage constantly threatening to boil over into violence, and that this crime may be connected to another unsolved murder. The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) has stumbled upon a string of murders perpetrated by a killer who has the same level of precision and dedication to his own craft as Stella does to hers.

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The Daily Beast: "Downton Abbey Season 4 Sets PBS Return Date"

PBS sets a January return date for the fourth season of Downton Abbey, and announces the return of Call the Midwife and the launch of dramedy Last Tango in Halifax.

At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Downton Abbey Season 4 Sets PBS Return Date," in which Masterpiece executive producer Rebecca Eaton talks about the return of Downton Abbey, which has (finally) set a U.S. return date in January 2014.

American fans of the Crawley clan can finally mark their calendars: Season 4 of Downton Abbey will kick off on PBS' Masterpiece Classic on Sunday, January 5, 2014.

Masterpiece executive producer Rebecca Eaton announced the official U.S. airdate for Season 4 of the award-winning period drama Tuesday at the PBS Annual Meeting. Downton's fourth season will run for eight weeks, from January 5 to February 23, 2014, roughly the time timeframe as its third season, which aired in the U.S. earlier this year. (In the U.K., Season 4 will air this autumn on ITV.)

"Masterpiece fans will not be disappointed: Julian [Fellowes] has done another brilliant job," Eaton wrote in an email to The Daily Beast, "this time, portraying the Downton family moving on from the tragedies of last season."

Those tragedies include the death of heir Matthew Crawley (Dan Stevens) and youngest daughter Sybil (Jessica Brown Findlay). The duo—along with Siobhan Finneran (who played devious maid Miss O'Brien)—will not be returning for a fourth installment of the Julian Fellowes-created Downton Abbey, the highest-rated drama in PBS history. A stunning 24 million total viewers tuned into Season 3 of Downton Abbey, and finale on February 17, 2012 was the top-rated show on television for the evening, beating all primetime broadcast and cable programming.

Season 4 of Downton Abbey will feature Shirley MacLaine reprising her role as Martha Levinson, along with several new actors joining the cast: Tom Cullen, Nigel Harman, Dame Harriet Walter, Joanna David, Julian Ovendon, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, and Gary Carr, to name a few.

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The Daily Beast: "Family Tree Brings Christopher Guest’s Mockumentary Style to HBO"

He pioneered the mockumentary on film. Now Christopher Guest is bringing his latest comedy, HBO’s Family Tree, to a TV landscape crowded with the format. My take on whether he succeeds.

At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Family Tree Brings Christopher Guest’s Mockumentary Style to HBO," in which I review HBO's latest comedy, Family Tree, which begins Sunday evening, and which stars Chris O'Dowd (The IT Crowd) and hails from the fertile mind of co-creator Christopher Guest (Best in Show, Waiting for Guffman, A Mighty Wind).

Over the last few decades, the mockumentary format has become almost totally synonymous with Christopher Guest, the writer/director (and often actor) best known for films such as This Is Spinal Tap, Best in Show, Waiting for Guffman, A Mighty Wind, and For Your Consideration. Each film—to varying success—mined the documentary format for laughs, setting up its eccentric characters as the butts of the joke ... or the only ones in on it.

It’s no surprise, then, that Guest would eventually seek to bring his brand of comedy to television, which has had significant success with the format: numerous comedies, from Modern Family to The Office and Parks and Recreation, have embraced the single-camera mockumentary format, allowing for characters to engage in “talking heads” segments in which they speak directly to the audience via an unseen film crew. It’s through this technique that characters are able to comment on what the viewer has just seen or will see, an act that creates an instantaneous and perpetual sense of intimacy. That rapport, in essence, sets up the audience as an additional, unseen character in the room, removing the narrative distance between the action and the viewer at home.

With Guest and Jim Piddock’s semi-improvised genealogy comedy Family Tree, which begins its eight-episode season this Sunday evening on HBO, the television mockumentary format may be reaching oversaturation. But for Family Tree, the result is nonetheless appealing, what I like to call “tea-cozy television”—nothing too precious or too taxing, but comforting to watch all the same.

The show, which features a slew of familiar faces from Guest’s previous film work, revolves around sad sack Tom Chadwick (Bridesmaids’ Chris O’Dowd), who has, in rapid succession, lost both his job and his girlfriend. Cuckolded and on the dole, Tom flounders until he receives an unusual bequest from his Great-Aunt Victoria: a mysterious box containing ephemera from his family’s complicated history. Rather than see the box as full of rubbish, he chooses to see it as an invitation to a quest: to reconstruct his family tree and come to terms with the Chadwick clan’s rather checkered past (and, one imagines, his own in the process).

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The Daily Beast: "Broadchurch: This British Murder Mystery Will Be Your Next Television Obsession"

British murder mystery Broadchurch, heading to the U.S. later this year on BBC America, is a worthy successor to Forbrydelsen. My take on ITV’s tantalizing thriller, which wraps up tonight in the U.K.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Broadchurch: This British Murder Mystery Will Be Your Next Television Obsession," in which I review ITV's sensational murder mystery Broadchurch, which stars David Tennant and Olivia Colman and which will head Stateside later this year on BBC America. Not to be missed!

The British have an insatiable appetite for crime fiction, whether it appears in print or on television screens. Putting aside the twee tea cozy mysteries of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot, however, these thrillers are not only taut but also bleak depictions of the psychological fallout from murder: tracing, as novelist Ruth Rendell has done so well in her work, how crime affects not just the victim, but also those left behind. Murder doesn’t just destroy a single life; it corrupts everyone with which it comes in contact.

ITV’s superlative murder mystery Broadchurch, which wraps up its eight-episode run tonight in the U.K. (it heads Stateside later this year on BBC America), explores just that, a gorgeously realized and emotive thriller that revolves around the murder of an 11-year-old boy, Danny Latimer (Oskar McNamara), in a seaside town on the Dorset coast, and the investigation by the police and the media to unmask his killer.

Created by Chris Chibnall, Broadchurch is, in many ways, a homegrown response to the riveting Nordic Noir television trend, which has captured the imagination of U.K. viewers in a very unexpected and palpable way. Like Forbrydelsen before it, Broadchurch focuses on both the police investigation—embodied here by churlish Detective Inspector Alec Hardy (David Tennant) and eager-to-be-liked Detective Sergeant Ellie Miller (Olivia Colman)—and how Danny’s family copes in the wake of such monumental grief. ITV’s Broadchurch—which was deemed “another jewel in the channel’s drama crown” by The Independent—has proven to be a huge success in its native Britain, luring in roughly 9 million consolidated viewers, putting it on par with the massively successful Downton Abbey.

Everyone is a suspect in Danny’s death, from the cheerful local vicar (Doctor Who’s Arthur Darvill) and the grizzled newsagent (David Bradley) to Danny’s own father, Mark (Andrew Buchan). Secrets have a way of spilling out in a murder investigation, and Broadchurch does a fantastic job of charting the numerous atomic explosions that follow in its wake. Everyone in the idyllic seaside town has something to conceal, something they’re running from, a terrible past that they’re looking to forget. Even Danny, the poor dead boy at the center of the story, seems to have harbored some terrible secret, one worth killing him over. Just what that is—and whodunit—remains the overarching plot that carries an electric current throughout the action.

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The Daily Beast: "Downton Abbey Breaks Records"

Season 3 of beloved British costume drama Downton Abbey has broken a number of ratings records, becoming the highest-rated PBS drama of all time, according to PBS. Plus, Masterpiece executive producer Rebecca Eaton reacts to the day-and-date broadcast issue.

At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Downton Abbey Breaks Records," in which I talk to Masterpiece executive producer Rebecca Eaton about the same-day broadcast issue and whether the show will be affected by the departure of Dan Stevens.

24 million viewers tuned in to watch the third season of Downton Abbey.

Just think about that for a second: 24 million viewers. In an age of increasingly fragmented television viewing, those numbers are even more staggering when you compare those figures next to say, a recent episode of NBC's Smash, which garnered roughly a tenth of that audience. Those numbers are huge for broadcast and cable, but considering that they're associated with a costume drama airing on a public broadcaster, even the Dowager Countess might choke on her tea upon seeing them.

In fact, Season 3 of Downton Abbey, which wrapped up its run last month, broke all records among households, according to finalized national ratings obtained from PBS, making Downton the highest-rated PBS drama of all time.

The third season of the British costume drama—which airs Stateside as part of Masterpiece Classic—had a season average rating of 7.7 and an average audience of 11.5 million across the seven week run. Compared to the second season, those ratings are up a stunning 64 and 65 percent respectively. Even more shocking: the overall cumulative ratings for Season 3 of Downton Abbey—that 24 million figure—show an increase of 7 million viewers from the sophomore season.

In fact, the controversial third season finale of Downton, which aired on February 17, was the highest-rated show on any network that night, posting a 8.1 national rating and an average audience of 12.3 million, numbers that placed it well above any other show on broadcast or cable that evening.

Online streams of the show share a similar story: On the PBS Video Portal and PBS mobile apps, Downton Abbey video content was viewed 13.9 million times since January 1, with full Season 3 episodes comprising the lion's share at 9.7 million views, an increase of 2.1 million streams from Season 2.

"We are so pleased with the loyalty and support U.S. audiences have shown Downton Abbey throughout this season," said Masterpiece executive producer Rebecca Eaton in a statement. "We look forward to more great drama and new challenges for the Crawley family in Season 4."

Reached via email for a comment, Eaton said that the success of Downton Abbey couldn't be reduced down to just one element. "I wouldn't pin this kind of success on just one thing,” she wrote in an email to The Daily Beast on Monday. “It is a combination of word of mouth, great reviews and massive press coverage, social media chatter, and award recognition. This is an audience that we've been building up over the last three seasons."

Still, said Eaton, no one at PBS or Masterpiece could have predicted that the show would become the highest rated PBS drama of all time: "No. None of us did. A good solid hit was in our sights, but one for the record books? No. Lucky us!"


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The Daily Beast: "Gone Girl: Inside ‘Top of the Lake,’ Jane Campion’s Haunting New Thriller"

A missing girl. A shocking crime. A town full of secrets. Welcome to Top of the Lake, from creators Jane Campion and Gerard Lee.

At the Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Gone Girl: Inside ‘Top of the Lake,’ Jane Campion’s Haunting New Thriller," for which I sit down with Jane Campion (The Piano), Elisabeth Moss (Mad Men), Holly Hunter (Saving Grace), and Gerard Lee (Sweetie) to discuss Top of the Lake, Campion's haunting and spellbinding new thriller, which launches on Monday evening on the Sundance Channel.

Jane Campion is missing.

The Oscar-nominated director of such films as The Piano and Bright Star is in Los Angeles for a quick stop before the Sundance Film Festival, where her seven-part mystery drama, Top of the Lake, will be screened in its entirety over one day. We’re scheduled to meet for a drink at the Polo Lounge in the historic Beverly Hills Hotel, but Campion has vanished from the hotel, and publicists can’t locate her.

Considering the subject matter of her gripping Sundance Channel limited series—a missing girl and the effort to locate her by a dogged female detective running from her own past—Campion’s disappearance seems almost too fitting. When the 58-year-old auteur does turn up, along with co-creator Gerard Lee, she’s full of heartfelt apologies, her unexpectedly cheerful nature creating an instant intimacy. We settle into a booth in a corner of the restaurant and order a round of gin and tonics, chatting as though we’ve been friends for years.

Top of the Lake, which begins March 18, revolves around the disappearance of Tui (Jacqueline Joe), a pregnant 12-year-old girl, in a remote area of New Zealand and the detective (Mad Men’s Elisabeth Moss) tasked with locating her and unmasking the man who impregnated her. It begins with Tui walking into a frigid lake, only to be found by a concerned teacher. After the authorities and her father, Matt Mitcham (Peter Mullan), a bloodthirsty local crime lord, discover that her odd behavior is due to the fact that she is pregnant, Tui vanishes. Moss’s Detective Robin Griffin, a local girl who escaped from Laketop to Sydney years ago, returns to care for her cancer-stricken mother, only to be roped into the investigation. Robin discovers that in trying to find Tui, she must delve deep into her own history: she too is running from something dark and dangerous.

“Robin’s history is kind of a crime scene,” says Campion. “She has to solve it for herself, and she has to become aware of it first. She’s in denial ... and Tui is triggering it, her disappearance mirroring something for her.” It’s a classic novel structure, argues Lee. “The character, by following the case, goes into herself and her own psyche and her own past,” he says. “They’ve got to solve that before they can solve this thing.”

As directed by Campion, Top of the Lake is an atmospheric and moody piece, both haunted and haunting, a gritty look at what lies beneath the surface of a seemingly idyllic lakeside town. As in many of Campion’s films, the inner lives of the characters are as rugged and wild as the landscape itself, and Top of the Lake is no exception. Numerous story strands—Robin’s dark past, the venomous Mitcham and his ne’er-do-well sons, a New Age women’s camp run by the mysterious guru GJ (Holly Hunter)—all coalesce into a taut and provocative thriller about damage, vengeance, and escape.

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The Daily Beast: "Five Facts About the New Doctor Who Companion, Jenna-Louise Coleman"

Her two previous Doctor Who characters all look alike... and they've all died. Jace Lacob rounds up five facts about new Doctor Who companion Jenna-Louise Coleman.

At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Five Facts About the New Doctor Who Companion, Jenna-Louise Coleman," in which I round up five facts about the new Doctor Who companion, Jenna-Louise Coleman, who joins Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor when the show returns to BBC America and BBC One on March 30.

Clara... who?

The Doctor—the centuries old time-traveler whose 11th incarnation is played by Matt Smith—has had his fair share of companions over the last 50 years, but the Time Lord is about to get yet another in the form of 26-year-old British actress Jenna-Louise Coleman, who steps into the TARDIS officially when Doctor Who's seventh season returns for its back half on March 30.

Coleman has turned up on Doctor Who twice already in the past year, playing very different characters with the same appearance and a similar name. There she is in "Asylum of the Daleks" as Oswin Oswald, the starship Alaska's junior entertainment manager whose soul is trapped in the body of a souffle-loving killing machine. There she is again as Clara Oswin Oswald in 2012's Christmas Special, "The Snowmen," playing a 19th century governess who gets caught up in one of the Doctor's plots. (It involves killer snow, memories, Richard E. Grant, and the disembodied voice of Sir Ian McKellen. Don't ask.)

Coleman's characters have a tendency to die, but the last sighting of Coleman—wandering around the graveyard where her 19th century doppelganger is bured in the 21st century—points towards an undeniable truth: they are all, somehow, the same woman, echoing across time and space.

Coleman is no stranger to television, even if American audiences aren't that familiar with the actress, who has appeared in ITV/ABC's Titanic miniseries (written by Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes), Captain America: The First Avenger, and Stephen Poliakoff's Jazz Age period drama Dancing on the Edge. But for those who want to know more about the actress who is taking over as the Doctor's official companion, a role last played Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill's Amy and Rory, below are five facts about Jenna-Louise Coleman.

1. One of her first television roles was on the long-running British soap Emmerdale, where she played Jasmine, one half of the show's "groundbreakingly ‘normal’ lesbian couple," alternately a troubled student, barmaid, and journalist. And a murderer, as it turns out. The character was written off the show when Jasmine was sent to prison for manslaughter after she bludgeoned her would-be rapist to death with a chair leg and then dumped the body in a lake. "As a first job I'm grateful for it," she told The Guardian earlier this year. "Though by the end I was quite restless. It was a brilliant experience. But I was ready to leave when I did."

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The Daily Beast: "Downton Abbey Crashes" (Or My Thoughts on the Controversial Season Finale)

My take on the frustrating finale of Downton Abbey, which ended its spectacular third season with heartbreak. WARNING: Spoilers ahead if you haven’t seen Sunday’s episode.

At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Downton Abbey: Why Last Night’s Season Finale Has Fans Seeing Red," in which I offer my thoughts about the controversial Season 3 finale, which aired last night on PBS's Masterpiece Classic.

He had to die.

There was no other way for Dan Steven’s Matthew Crawley to leave Downton Abbey other than in a body bag. As the heir to the grand estate and the title, it would have been impossible for sensible, responsible Matthew to shirk his responsibilities and head to America to start a career on the New York stage, or—to borrow from Monarch of the Glen, a Scottish Highlands-set drama that featured Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes as part of its cast—to go climb a mountain somewhere.

No, Matthew Crawley was not only wedded to Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) but to the great house itself, and there was no getting around the fact that, in order to accommodate actor Dan Steven’s desire to leave the show, Matthew had to be killed off in some fashion.

It’s the means in which Matthew was unceremoniously dispatched that I take some umbrage with, however. I raised this point in a vague fashion in my advance review of Season 3 of Downton Abbey back in January, giving the season a glowing recommendation while criticizing the heavy-handed finale.

After a season that was particularly top-heavy with death—the gutting demise of beloved Sybil (Jessica Brown Findlay)—and disappointment, Matthew’s death threatens to topple the entire show with its melodramatic weight. And, let’s be honest, the minute that Lady Mary gave birth to a son, ensuring the continuation of the dynasty and a rightful succession (lest we be plunged right back into another entail drama like Season 1), Matthew was a goner. He had served his purpose, ensuring that the Crawley line would continue and that Downton Abbey—which he had absolutely and completely saved by dragging it and Robert Crawley (Hugh Bonneville) into the 20th century—would not only remain in the family, but also turn a profit.

Matthew was, in essence, a stud bull. His only purpose was to father a son. With that act completed and Downton saved, what was Matthew’s future importance within the narrative? Other than potential squabbles with Mary—serving again to prove how headstrong she is—where would the drama have come from? His plots were tied up way too neatly for him to survive, in other words.

The rabid fans of Downton Abbey wouldn’t accept another actor playing the dashing and modern Matthew, nor would they have accepted a flimsy excuse for why Matthew had decamped to other climes. But what I found frustrating was how Fellowes orchestrated his demise, having Matthew run off the road by an errant milk truck after joyfully greeting his baby boy for the first time. It was maudlin and too predictable, especially compared to the way in which Sybil had just been sent out of the world a few episodes earlier. Sybil’s death rocked both the audience and the show itself, a brutal reminder of how far medicine and childbirth have come in the last 100 years and also how wealth and privilege don’t always insulate families from loss and harm.

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