I've been so nervous anticipating the second installment of Downton Abbey that it has nearly put me off my feed Oh no! Now I've gone and done it again, throwing out a horribly vulgar American farm expression, when I have been eating crumpets and trying mightily to be worthy to watch the upper crustian Lord and Lady and the lower crustian servants in this marvelous story.
Here's a run down to bring you up to speed
Lord Robert Crawley has only one job, which is to keep the huge pile of rocks that is his boyhood home from becoming Stonehenge. This is a difficult job due to constant interruptions to open tiny little letters delivered on a silver tray by his formidable butler, Mr. Carson
Mr. Carson may look like he wants to tear out your cholesterol-clogged American heart, but he is really as gentle as clotted cream
Lady Cora Crawley was initially married for her revoltingly modern and obscenely large American fortune but her titled husband grew to love her in spite of her grating non-English accent
Lady Sybil, Lady Mary and Lady Edith are the three feminine progeny of their poor male-inheritorless father. Mary is the oldest and as mean as a rattlesnake, while Edith is as mean as a slightly homely cobra. Sybil is as harmless as a garter snake except that she likes to sneak around with the chauffeur to political rallies and once wore harem pants to dinner.
Violet, the oldest Crawley is so condescendingly English that she will make you want to give the United States back to Queen Elizabeth with a note of apology.
The staff, which works 15 hours, 364 1/2 days per year, unless their mother dies--is totally devoted to the Crawley family with the exception of O'Brien and Thomas, who have been known to soap the floor causing the miscarriage of a long awaited male heir, and raid the wine cellar, respectively.
Tune in to PBS on Sunday to find out if World War I
causes a starch shortage and resultant fainting spells.
I can hardly wait!
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