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

The Alzheimer's Project: The Memory Loss Tapes on HBO

[I've yet to see this four-part documentary series on HBO, but I feel strongly enough about this subject that I wanted to post this in advance of the series beginning, and the advanced reviews have been excellent, as well as previous documentary films by these filmmakers - El]

HBO is going to unscramble its premium signal Sunday, though it may not be done in all areas, thus allowing non-subscribers to see "The Alzheimer's Project" part one, at 9-10:30pm Sunday night. HBO says of the series "A new way of looking at the disease". Click here for the HBO Link, and all four episodes can be streamed from here as well. My lifetime friend, Charlton McMillan, and his wife Shari Cookson were instrumental in creating The Memory Loss Tapes, the first episode of this four-part HBO series. Shari, who is a multiple Emmy nominee for Living Dolls and All Aboard! Rosie's Family Cruise, shares director-producer credit with Nick Doob. Charlton, an Emmy winner for Living Dolls, shares editing credit with Nick. Charlton also did some editing work on the second part of the series, Grandpa, Do You Know Who I Am? Here are two print reviews for the series: New York Times L.A. Times A blog review from critic James Bawden Please either watch or record this and let people know about it. We never know when we will have to deal with this disease either within our families, friends, or within our own minds. Rather than giving money to corporate gamblers, we should be funding cures and care for humanitarian efforts and documentaries such as these. The Alzheimer's Organization is at http://www.alz.org/