We have always loved Downton outdoors—not scenes of the ladies roaming the hedges at some tea party, gossiping about Sir Evelyn Napier’s hot friends, but the outdoor scenes of country sports, like the pheasant shoot last season, the family hike where Sir Richard wears the wrong tweeds, or that fan favorite, the fox-hunting gallivant with Kemal Pamuk. Whereas Downton’s whole upstairs-downstairs shtick depends deeply on its Carnarvon interiors—on the judge-y appraisals of those fringed lamps—the outdoors really remind you the show is on (gorgeous) location. It’s like stumbling upon a vivid, perfectly preserved colorplate in the middle of an ancient, yellowing library book. Especially for American audiences, where the closest thing to Matthew casting his fly rod in a west-highlands stream, the amber evening sun catching the sine curve of his line, is, what—Bassmaster?
Our Downton Abbey Season Three finale recap in full, here!
And now—record scratch—Branson in a cricket sweater. Branson jogging in slow motion in a cricket sweater! What we’re encouraged to believe is the softer side of Branson The Dad is essentially just poshification—some extra-abrading sandpaper taken to his more unsightly Marxist edges. Now he’s all like, “Stop ruining the dinner party, Mrs. Patmore made lobster, does that mean anything to you” to his “drunken gorilla” brother, and tucking into soft-boiled eggs and starched papers before a leisurely saunter to the estate farms.
More in our weekly recap! Read and tell us what you think of Branson’s new, Brooks Brothers-y lease on life.
Last night’s Downton Abbey (read no further if you’re spoiler averse!):
Lady Sybil was shunted into a terrible wig-hat, still managed to have a perfect daughter, and then met her (gasp!) untimely end while the family watched—check out Matthew’s totally casual, just-riding-the-subway posture in the family shot.
More on the heartbreak and high frivolity of episode four, here.
All, courtesy Carnival Film & Television Limited 2012 for Masterpiece.
On last night’s Downton Abbey—just announced as a record-setter with 7.9 million viewers, or 96 percent more viewers than watched last season’s premiere—Mary and Matthew had a lot of cool, restrained conversations about Yorkshire horticulture and what to name their children.
Just kidding! They fell into bed, like, every five seconds. A heated, spirited retelling in this week’s Downton Abbey recap.
Mary and Matthew, courtesy Masterpiece/PBS/Carnival Films.
Portrait of a Lady | Downton Abbey’s Lady Mary as You’ve Never Seen Her Before
Illustration by David Downton
Madeleine Vionnet | The Favorite Fashion Designer of Downton Abbey’s Lady Mary
Photograph by Hoyningen-Huene, Courtesy of Chronicle Books
