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    Downton Abbey: The Untold History of Television
    Downton Abbey: The Untold History of Television
    Downton Abbey: The Untold History of Television
    Ebook42 pages30 minutes

    Downton Abbey: The Untold History of Television

    By Kathleen Olmstead

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    About this ebook

    The Untold History of Television provides an exciting glimpse behind the scenes of the groundbreaking series that have defined the landscape of popular culture.

    Emmy Award-winning Downton Abbey brings to life the trials and tribulations of the aristocratic Crawley family and their servants as they struggle to maintain their place in the rapidly changing world of the early 20th century. Rich with period costumes, schemes, intrigue, and affairs of the heart, Downton Abbey is a vivid portrait of a now-vanished way of life. In this text, Kathleen Olmstead examines the unlikely popularity of this character-driven period drama and its relevance to today’s audience.

    The ebook contains information about the inception and development of the series, thought-provoking episode analysis, and on-set stories about the cast and crew.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJun 5, 2012
    ISBN9781443418096
    Downton Abbey: The Untold History of Television
    Author

    Kathleen Olmstead

    Kathleen Olmstead has written more than a dozen books—fiction and non-fiction—for the young adult market and her short fiction and poetry have appeared in Fireweed and Taddle Creek, among other journals. She has produced, written and directed several short films and is always working on the next one. She is a part of the Arbeiter Ring Publishing collective. Kathleen lives and works in Toronto.

    Read more from Kathleen Olmstead

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      Book preview

      Downton Abbey - Kathleen Olmstead

      Downton Abbey

      The Untold History

      of Television

      Kathleen Olmstead

      Contents

      Downton Abbey

      About the Author

      Copyright

      About the Publisher

      Downton Abbey

      The February 13, 2012, edition of The New Yorker contains a cartoon by David Sipress depicting a couple standing at a crossroad. A sign indicates that Downton Abbey is to their right and Jersey Shore is to their left. They pause to decide which pop-culture road they should take. Jersey Shore, a so-called reality show about people partying, drinking, and participating in various forms of mayhem, is one of MTV’s highest rated programs. CNN’s Anderson Cooper has accused the show’s star, Snooki, of being a freakishly tan, beer-guzzling, juicehead-hugging, muscle-loving, Botero-bodied, pint-sized, money-making machine.

      Downton Abbey is the opposite: a period drama with no profanity, nudity, or violence. There is very little sex, and it is only alluded to onscreen. The women wear corsets and the men wear jackets and cufflinks. Important plot points are delivered while the silver is being polished or the fireplaces cleaned, or over a cup of tea. The success of Jersey Shore (and its appeal to the lowest common denominator) is unsurprising: there is little challenge in watching a group of fools being foolish. The show highlights the fast track to fame of reality television and allows the audience to feel superior—as in, I would never do that—for a period of time. However, the fact that a British costume drama has also entered the pop-culture zeitgeist is somewhat remarkable.

      In the UK, Downton Abbey began airing in 2010 on ITV on Sunday nights, following Simon Cowell’s The X Factor, which averaged 10 million viewers per episode. Having a popular reality show as a lead-in undoubtedly helped boost ratings, but Downton Abbey was clearly popular in its own right as well. When the first season was released on DVD, it became the highest-selling boxset of all time on Amazon UK. And the show proved to be just as popular when it reached North America, even without the benefit of a televised singing competition running beforehand. It aired as part of PBS’s Masterpiece series, and while it might have been expected that the Miss Marple crowd would tune in, Downton Abbey reached far beyond this limited audience. By the end of the second season according to Entertainment Weekly, the number of women between 18 and 35 watching Masterpiece rose by an incredible 251%—this was a whole new market for PBS. The final episode of season two brought in 5.4 million viewers, the highest ratings for the network in years; higher than critical darlings like Mad Men and Breaking Bad, and, it should be noted, Jersey Shore.

      Downton Abbey earned accolades and awards from the industry (among them Emmys, a Golden Globe, and a BAFTA) as well as the admiration of the young and hip. Gawker.com published an article entitled "Why Everyone in the Universe Should Watch Downton Abbey" and regularly posted updates. Slate, Grantland, Entertainment Weekly, Salon.com, and The Huffington Post, to name but a few, published reviews and episode recaps each week. It was like

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