As the Dowager Countess (Maggie Smith) declares in tomorrow’s second-season premiere of “Downton Abbey,” “War makes early risers of us all.”
Making the ultimate sacrifice, she says, “I thought I’d help with the flowers. Cora’s flowers always look more suited to a first communion . . . In Southern Italy.”
Yes, even though World War I is raging and members of her family are in the trenches in France, the Dowager Countess will not let a little thing like war interrupt her way of life.
What the countess doesn’t know is that this war will bring about class warfare — and that unimagined friendships and rivalries will develop between the upper-crusties and the working stiffs as structures break down, and the old way of life begins to disappear.
As the war intensifies in each episode, young men either volunteer, are called to arms, or are given a pass when the Countess arranges for the war office to claim them unfit for service. After all, one can’t have a dinner party without a footman, can one?
Meantime, Matthew (Dan Stevens), who is fighting in the trenches, has become engaged to Lavinia Swire (Zoe Boyle), much to the anger and regret of Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery).
Her father, the Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville), is also angry — and shamed — when, in full uniform, he is told that instead of being sent to the front, he must remain at home and keep the locals’ spirits from flagging.
Talk about all dressed up with nowhere to go.
Downstairs, Mr. Bates (Brendan Coyle), who has inherited his mother’s house, makes known his love to housemaid Anna (Joanne Froggatt).
But wait, what’s Bates’ evil estranged wife, Vera (Maria Doyle Kennedy), doing in the kitchen? Baking up some blackmail, that’s what.
Will Bates fall on the sword to protect the Crawleys, or will he turn his back on them and fulfill his dreams with Anna?
Those are just a few of the many intrigues and plots running through Season Two of “Downton Abbey,” as the series seamlessly moves between the horrors of war and the gentility of life in the show’s titular 100-room manor.
Cowards are revealed, heroes are created and barriers are broken down as the sisters realize — when Downton is parcelled off as a convalescent hospital for the wounded — how shallow their lives really are.
Lives and loves are lost, war rages, class and privilege dissolve.
Will life ever be the same at Downton Abbey?
Are you kidding?
How you gonna keep them down on the Abbey after they’ve seen Paree?