Public television hasn’t had anything close to as big a hit as “Downton Abbey” in its history — nothing with as big ratings, nothing that caused as much buzz, nothing that got it on so many magazine covers — so it’s natural it’s not only paying close attention to what happens with it, but pouring a lot of money into it as well.
The thing that stuck me as I watched several episodes of season five for “Masterpiece Classic” (PBS, 9 p.m.) is just how beautiful it looked — the splendid grounds of course, the exquisitely detailed interiors, the wonderful costumes, all superbly photographed so that every scene seems a carefully-directed portrait worth framing.
Of course, what I should have been more attentive to was the characters and what was happening to all of them. But I’ve rarely felt this distanced from it all. Mary’s on again with a chap, and then off again, but at least is not mourning dreadfully all season as she was last year. Thomas is part of the family but warms to the revolutionaries and his potential girlfriend in the rabble-rousing Miss Bunting, a village school teacher, is cause for repeated hubbub in the house. Over and over again.
To that end, Lord Grantham has never been so one-dimensional in his blustery upper crust outbursts. And his mother’s catty commentary is by now rote and expected. Nothing is quite like the cloud that hovers over Lady Edith, with her plan for the local farmer to raise her illegit daughter going quickly awry. And frisky Cousin Rose is about to embark on another relationship sure to be controversial with some — or the Countess Dowager at least. The children are shooed through each episode as if in some contractual obligation.
So it’s business as usual, in other words, at the manor, and more of the same downstairs. Someone quickly leaves the house in the season premiere, but unfortunately it’s not the Bates, whose storyline threatened to derail all of last season. Once seen as the lovebirds among servants, they are dour presences now, with the crimes of last season suddenly reinvestigated (and the course of the action plainly set, though it hasn’t happened yet).
If Lord Grantham is the bloated caricature upstairs, it’s Carson who fills that role downstairs: disapproving, blustery, kind of hard to believe. The supposed romance with Mrs. Hughes isn’t exactly blazing. The secret behind that new maid from last year gets told in time; Thomas has some other secrets he’s trying to find out, and another he’s hiding. Daisy wants an education, Mrs. Patmore wants to invest and Mosby can’t catch a break.
That it’s 1924 means they talk of the modern age and the Labor Party in charge, but that’s about it. Rose wants to get a newfangled radio, and Lord Grantham is all disapproving until he hears the king will address the nation on it. Then Mary gets a fancy hair bob. But I guess that’s a spoiler.
Because public TV won’t let you go even after a season premiere that runs 15 minutes long, there’s a kind of after show. Not a “Downton Downlow” talk show hosted by Chris Hardwick, but a thing called “The Manners of Downton Abbey” (PBS, 10:15 p.m., check local listings) about the customs of the time, hosted by the show’s historical adviser Alastair Bruce. Before the premiere, they practically suggest you bake a batch of biscuits to enjoy with the premiere, as shown by the hosts of “The Great British Baking Show” (PBS, 8 p.m., check local listings).
You know they have a hit when other networks plan their own pre-shows. On “Million-Dollar American Princesses” (Smithsonian, 8 p.m.), Elizabeth McGovern — Lady Grantham herself – talks about the British aristocrats who married American heiresses in roughly the “Downton” period of 1880 to 1920, starting with one who gave birth to Winston Churchill.