UPSTAIRS, DOWNTON STAIRS

I know right now that I am going be a total wreck when “Downton Abbey” Season Two concludes on Sunday night.

This kind of thing has happened to me before. My devotion to British costume dramas began in 1971 when PBS first broadcast “Upstairs, Downstairs.” I was glued to the TV every Sunday that it played. I was bereft when it ended. Enduring all their tragedies and celebrating all their joys, I persevered with the Bellamy family (Upstairs) and their servants (Downstairs) as their fictional lives unfolded in 68 episodes from 1903 to 1930.  68 episodes! Epic!

Years later, I watched the entire series again, twice actually, in reruns. I was a mess for weeks each time. By the third viewing, even though I absolutely knew what was going to happen, I became completely unglued anyway. I knew those characters so well; the tragedies that befell some of them were unbearably sad. Why do we love to watch programs that make us weep this much?

Now the same thing is happening all over again with “Downton Abbey.” But what surprises me this time is how quickly I’ve gotten sucked in. So far, with only four episodes in Season One and seven in Season Two, we’ve gone from 1912, mourned the sinking of the Titanic, ripped right through WW I, survived the Spanish Flu pandemic after the war ((well, some characters survived, and I knew ahead of time which one would perish. Didn’t you? Of course you did!) and we are now firmly in 1919 where we await more upheaval. It took years for “Upstairs Downstairs” to cover the exact same story arc.

And yet, I’m hooked.

Is it because the production is just so darn good that they’ve been able to cram all that drama and emotion into 11 short weeks? I mean! At the end of each show, Ken and I have turned to each other, exhausted, and said, “Wow! Could they have packed any more into that episode!?!”

Is it because it is so gorgeous to look at that we are willing to overlook occasional corny dialogue (dropped into the otherwise luscious writing) inserted to drive the plot along? (For instance, at the end of an episode in Season One, Lord Grantham says to his wife, Cora, “Our lives will change in more ways than we can imagine.” A bit wince-evoking, but handy shorthand in comparison to the more languorous “Upstairs Downstairs” in which they would have more subtlety demonstrated that fact over 4 or 5 episodes.)

Or is it because we are all so conditioned to our modern world of instant communications that we now all have a sad case of Adult Attention Deficit Disorder? Do the producers believe they risk losing us if the action isn’t compressed into sound bites rather than delivering storyline to us in long, lingering language;  the bygone televisual equivalent of waiting for the post to arrive?

No matter. I know I will be sobbing on Sunday night and already aching for Season Three.  Kleenex, please!