Downton Abbey Season One Review

Jim Carter as the butler leads the servant staff (L), while

Hugh Bonneville as the Earl heads the family (R)

I just reviewed Downton Abbey, Season One at my companion site, 1000 Dvds to See. I gave it one of just 40 perfect 10's I've awarded out of 830 reviews so far. As far as tv goes, and especially Masterpiece Theater, it doesn't get any better than this.

Season one was seven episodes, just under seven hours long. It's the complex story of the lives of both the family members and their staff of servants at a British Manor house, circa 1910, in the waning years of the wealth and power of this class system, when over 50% of the land in England was owned by just 100 families.

I've included some history in my review as well to set the stage for the story, excellently written by Julian Fellowes, who has received 7 of the 12 awards that the mini-series has won to date. Click here for my review

Given it's fans' rating of 9.0 at IMDB, if it were a feature-length film it would be tied for 2nd with The Godfather (1972), only bettered by the 9.1 garnered by The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

Note: I would have just copied the review to this site as well, but Google with lock out a site for 3 days for "duplicate postings"; that happened the only time I did that

World's Best Drama Films

Films in gold won Best Picture

• 12 Angry Men (bw)
• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (bw)
• All About Eve (bw)
• Amadeus
• The Apartment
• Broadcast News
• Citizen Kane (bw)
• Dominick and Eugene (drama)
• Elmer Gantry (drama, bw)
• Empire Falls (mini-series)
• Fearless (Peter Weir's)
• Good Will Hunting
• Housekeeping
• Hud (bw)
• The Hustler (bw)
• The Last Picture Show (bw)
• Little Foxes (bw)
• The Magnificent Ambersons (bw)
• Midnight Cowboy
• Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (bw)
• Munich
• Network
• Nicholas Nickleby (8 hr)
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
• On the Waterfront
• Seven Days in May
• The Shawshank Redemption
• Stars Fell on Henrietta
• The Sweet Hereafter
• The Sweet Smell of Success (bw)
• Terms of Endearment
• To Kill a Mockingbird (bw)
• Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (bw)

Foreign Language Drama

• Babel (Mexico)
• The Conformist (Italy)
• El Norte (Mexico)
• The Gospel According to St. Matthew (Italy, bw)
• The Grand Illusion (France, bw)
• Jean de Florette/Manon of the Spring (France)
• Kolya (Czech)
• L'America (Italy)
• La Dolce Vita (Italy)
• The Motorcycle Diaries (US, in Spanish)
• The Return of Martin Guerre (France)
• To Live (China)

Docu-dramas, based on true stories

• A Beautiful Mind
• Alexander Nevsky (Russia)
• All the President's Men
• Citizen X
• Dead Man Walking
• Downfall (Germany)
• Drugstore Cowboy
• Elizabeth
• Finding Neverland
• Gandhi
• Hope and Glory
• In Cold Blood
• The Last Emperor
• The Madness of King George
• Mongol (Russia)
• The Motorcycle Diaries
• The Name of the Rose
• Norma Rae
• October Sky
• Reds
• Reilly, Ace of Spies (mini-series)
• Searching for Bobby Fisher
• Songcatcher
• Sybil
• Tucker: A Man and His Dream
• The World's Fastest Indian

Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring are two halves of the same novel, released simultaneously; theater goers could see the movie back-to-back as a double feature, or come back another day for the second part. This is an all-time classic, not to be missed. Nicholas Nickleby (played by Roger Rees) was a film version of the 8-hr London play; it was performed four nights a week in 2-hr segments; on Saturday it was performed in 2-four hour segments with a one hour lunch break. This is easily the best Dickens novel on film. I believe it was only 60 actors who played 250 roles. Milos Foreman directed both Amadeus and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Bernardo Bertolucci directed both The Conformist and The Last Emperor.