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Series four, episode nine
Don’t panic – no one dies. The only violence on display as Downton’s denizens travel to London for Rose’s Coming Out ball (the location work, incidentally, is superb) comes in a clash of cultures. For tonight sees the return of Shirley MacLaine as Cora’s mum, this time with Paul Giamatti in tow as Cora’s disgraced brother Harold.
Not since Tony Blair has a British figurehead made so naked an appeal to an American audience. Too many sentences are variations on ‘I thought all English people/meals/trousers were like…’ and Giamatti’s performance is genuinely strange, as if the personality has been directed out of it. Still, the escapades of ‘Mary’s men’ continue to amuse, and there’s a daft caper surrounding a stolen letter; only the aftermath of Edith’s trip to Geneva and lingering suspicions concerning Bates and the hated Mr Green chafe against the dominant frippery.
To whit, after the turbulence of last year’s special and this year’s rape, this episode ends with two ‘Downton’ stalwarts wading cautiously into the sea at low tide, trousers rolled up. No one could get indigestion from something this mild.