Oh, Downton Abbey – how do we love you?!

Pity those other series that build tension out of universe-shaking devices – a nuclear bomb here, a countdown to destruction there. Bless their proverbial cottons, but they’re all trying too hard. The real way to get 12 million viewers tuning in is through the use of strategically-placed household objects.

Long-time Downtoners will remember the Bar of Soap of Doom that enlivened last year’s finale – and may yet have a part to play in next week’s final episode, if that clip of O’Brien’s tearful confession is anything to go by. In this episode, we saw its stablemate: the Tea Tray of Destiny.

We’d had suspicions about Matthew’s legs, ever since the Next Time trailer last week. But the moment of resurrection, when it came, was a farcical tour-de-force. A tour de farce, if you will.

In the Downton universe, simple gallantry will always win out over minor medical considerations, like paralysis of the spine and stuff. And when there are matters of universal import at stake, like the danger of tea things spilling over the Ottoman, how could such gallantry not compel a man to use his paralysed legs? There will have been women, up and down the country, turning to their partners and saying, ‘See? He offers to help with the tea things. And he can’t even walk!’

No wonder Julian Fellowes needed to write in a Poirot-esque scene in the Library as the discredited doctor explained just how such a miracle could be possible. It was certainly taxing our little grey cells.

However, all things considered, Fellowes may have been right to return to Matthew the power of walking. It’s just possible that, in a series that has trod an uneasy line between melodrama and parody, the continued sight of a wheelchair-bound Matthew may not have evoked the necessary pathos – coming across instead like a pastiche of British stiff upper lipness, complete with glassy-eyed looks into the middle distance.

It’s the trouble you risk when you constantly skate this close to cliché. Getting Dame Maggie to channel her inner Lady Bracknell always works – especially when she’s required to sneer at ‘Pyjamas!’ But the sight of Mary and Edith chasing after runaway Sybil was pure Keystone Kops – not helped by the insistent der-ner-na-ner music on the soundtrack. And surely that can’t have been the ghost of Max Miller invoked when Ethel’s love child met its grandparents? ‘He’s their only grandchild. There can never be another.’ (Lady, never be another!)

But for the dedicated Downton fan, none of this really matters, because as long as you’ve got Jim Carter on screen, giving it his best wistful twinkle, all is right with the world.

Has Downton Abbey’s second run been a letdown after Series 1? Yes. Does it retain enough moments of joy to bamboozle the viewer with delight? Certainly.

Aired at 9pm on Sunday 30th October 2011 on ITV1.

> Order the Series 2 boxset on Amazon.

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