"Highclere Castle", "Downton Abbey"

Occupy Downton Abbey

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="219" caption="Highclere Castle, the setting for "Downton Abbey." Photo by JB+UK_Planet."]"Highclere Castle", "Downton Abbey"[/caption] Last week I had the worst cold I’ve had in years, and spent several days curled up in bed with my laptop, streaming BBC miniseries and period films from Netflix. I started with “Mrs. Brown,” the 1997 BBC Scotland production starring Judi Dench as Queen Victoria and Billy Connolly as her devoted Scottish servant; moved on to two adaptations of Elizabeth Gaskell novels—“North and South” (2004) and “Wives and Daughters” (1999); then spent one sleepless night indulging in all seven episodes of the first season of “Downton Abbey,” the Julian Fellowes creation that follows the ups and downs of masters and servants on an English estate in the early 20th century. It was great fun, of course—the language, the settings, the costumes, oh my! But it was also sort of gross. ...