And now a word from Downton Abbey

I gather from the lack of response when I mentioned the show that few around here are devotees of Downton Abbey, the great Masterpiece series that ran for six big-hit years before its creators decided gracefully to bow out.

In a way I’m not surprised at the lack of a Living Freedom Downton Abbey Rah Rah Fan Club. Outwardly Downton has nothing to do with freedom. It’s also a kitchen-and-drawing-room drama, offputting for you, my largely male readership. So I’m not saying everyone should just rush right out and binge-stream Downton Abbey until they’ve gained 50 pounds from all the popcorn.

I’m just sad more don’t like it.

Yes, it’s a melodrama. But it’s also quality drama-drama, with superb characters, authentic atmosphere, simmering class conflicts, and glimpses of history. One of the things it has is stop-you-in-your-tracks brilliant dialog, brilliantly played.

Example — and this is a spoiler, so skip this if you aim to enter the series virgin-pure of mind. Robert Crawley, the Earl of Grantham (perfectly played by Hugh Bonneville) is a decent man. A man of principle, dignity, and compassion. But he’s also very, very much a member of the old-order aristocracy. He knows what’s proper, and one thing that’s very much not proper as the series opens in 1912, is the classes mixing as equals.

That will change. The most abrupt change is his youngest daughter (Jessica Brown Findlay) announcing she’s going to marry the chauffeur. You can imagine the heads hitting the fainting couches (I exaggerate a little). You can imagine Lord Grantham’s thundering rage.

But both Lady Sybil and the chauffeur, Tom Branson (Allen Leech), are made of stern stuff. Both are committed social reformers. She wants to break out of ladylike confinement. He’s an Irish rebel with a communist’s disdain for social class. And he is every bit Lord Grantham’s equal in dignity and honor.

There is a scene where the young couple is about to leave England to be married after a week of family conflict. They’re scorned, disowned, and still nobody bends. As they begin their final walk away, unblessed, the Earl yields. He calls them back and tells Lady Sybil there will still be money for her and a welcome home.

Then he snaps his head toward Branson and states with steely calm, “If you mistreat her I will personally have you torn apart by wild dogs.”

Branson pulls himself up to his full height and nods, “I would expect no less.”

Isn’t that a wonderful piece of writing? With acting to do it full justice. The whole series sparkles with that level of dialog and drama.

Even though this is my second time through the series, I still find myself getting involved and talking to the characters: “Now don’t do that. You don’t want to do that …” Or telling Thomas the conniving footman or O’Brien his lady’s maid partner in crime, “Oh, you rotten scoundrel, you.”

But aside from being gripping drama (if still given to moments of deus ex melodrama for which you want to smack creator/writer Julian Fellowes upside his brilliant head; “Mr. Pamuk, anyone?” I say to you who’ve seen season one), it really is in a lot of ways about freedom. Or at least about the history of how freedom and prosperity ebb and flow. It’s about manners and mores, but occasionally runs a tad deeper than, say, Jane Austen. When it covers manners, you understand the values that lie beneath. Excepting the occasional villain, these people do have deep values.

It’s about how people at all levels meet the challenges of a shifting old order with history cracking under it. Then the arrival of a brave new world of votes for women, the collapse of ancient estates, jazz music, bold women beginning to hold good jobs, and young people occasionally “living in sin.”

It’s about how even if they can’t prevent their world from crumbling, they can choose how they behave in response.

To me, it says a lot that’s meant for us now. While we theoretically never had an aristocracy, we’re building one. We’re obviously going in the opposite direction of the Downton people, so it’s almost as if nothing would be relevant. But so much is shifting at the roots. Theirs and ours. These experiences of the Crawley family, their servants, and inhabitants of the local village seem at once about both past and future. And about history that’s superbly woven into terrific stories, magnificently played.

I think above all, it’s a poignant pleasure to watch characters rise to their own moral codes and strive to be good people even as the world moves under them.