There are times when Downton Abbey resembles nothing so much as an episode of French and Saunders. Plot developments shuffle into view, like two old dears repeating the dialogue very loudly for the hard of hearing at the back. ‘I’m an American, Alfred, and this is 1920’; ‘Mary, the world has changed’; ‘Are these still forbidden subjects in 1920?’

It’s very much the “tell don’t show” school of dialogue. ‘Sell Downton?’ queries incarcerated footman Bates, before adding, in a moment of glorious self-commentary, ‘That makes me sad.’

Little wonder that Maggie Smith won Best Supporting Actress at the Emmy Awards for her performance; this kind of dialogue requires one eyebrow permanently raised at the viewer. It’s like being hit over the head with a mallet swathed in a lace doily. The sort of stodgy meta-dialogue that deserves its own doctoral thesis, purely devoted to illuminating the moment when portentous self-regard gives way to post-modernist knowingness.

The moment is set from the first scene, and Matthew Crawley drives into view on a motor car – an apologetic Mr Toad castrated by the Downton obeisance to tradition.
You will have gathered, by now, that this is 1920 and ‘Change’ is in the air. Big, lumbering Change that hijacks everyone except the Americans, who are just too damned savvy to do the British thing and grimace politely in the face of a post-war world. Savviness in Downton is out; but arch exasperation is always on the menu – even when, as it turns out, nothing much else is, due to a Great Calamity with the cooking range in the kitchen.

Still, you know what those savvy Americans are like: when life gives them lemons, they make lemonade. And when life packs up the stove, they turn a picnic into a parlour game.
The soufflés will never rise, observes Mrs Patmore. But they’re not the only ones – and we’re not referring to Matthew’s former medical condition here. The plot is proving pretty leaden, too.

When Thomas, the sometimes-gay footman, loses a plot contrivance in the form of His Lordship’s shirts, it leads to a startling exchange concerning the popularity of Thomas – ahem – below the plumb line. ‘Are you not popular downstairs?’ asks Cousin Robert. ‘I wouldn’t say that, m’lord,’ replies Thomas. And nor would we. We’ve been on Famous Males Forums.

But for all Thomas’s peevish-lusty scowls at new footman, Alfred, it’s not Thomas who is providing the gay action this episode. Leading the way in this, as in all else, are the Americans. Yes, when social barriers are broken down, all sorts of bi-curious desires come to the fore – including, it turns out, the sight of Shirley MacLaine crooning at Dame Maggie, ‘Let me call you, sweetheart. I’m in love with you.’ Give that woman her due. With sheer Yankee-doodle charisma alone, she is able to fill Dame Maggie’s well of loneliness.

But it’s loneliness of a different kind that most resonates with us this week. Specifically the love of dear Edith for Sir Anthony Strallan: a clammy vicar’s handshake of a man who is limpidly unworthy of her.

Lady Edith has a point when she observes that Sir Anthony has the advantage of (a) not being a chauffeur and (b) not being dead. To this list, she could also have added: he doesn’t bang on about Irish independence all the time, and he doesn’t wibble his bottom lip while emoting, ‘I do love you so terribly much’.

Still, Lady Edith – always painted as the Ugly Duckling of the Downton girls – is, for our money, the true weapon in Downton’s dynastic armoury. ‘Some animals adapt to new surroundings’, observes writer Julian Fellowes, plucking an animal analogy from his Big Book of Metaphors. But for all Sir Anthony is, you know, alive, if Edith marries him, it would be like seeing a gazelle handcuffed to a dormouse. This cannot happen.

Aired at 9pm on Sunday 23rd September 2012 on ITV1.

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