[ SECRET POST #3763 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3763 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 49 secrets from Secret Submission Post #538.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

03. http://i.imgur.com/LGCWpm7.png

[sarillia]

"A soap opera with pretty costumes and scenery" is all I ever expected from this show. It was never sold to me as something with strengths it didn't actually have.

[(Anonymous)]

What did you think it was, OP, other than lightweight evening weekend entertainment? Serious discourse on class issues or something?

Why? It wasn't ever billed that way.

[(Anonymous)]

Not OP, but two things

one, there's a lot of things in the broader category of Costume Drama that actually are Serious Dramas as well, so if you're coming at it from that point of view, it kinda makes sense

two, people overhyped the shit out of Downtown Abbey in its first season. it was not billed as a light entertainment costume soap opera in its first season by any means. that's historically revisionist.

[(Anonymous)]

Well first of all, there's a lot of middle ground between soap opera light entertainment and serious discourse on class issues. Second, no, it wasn't billed as light entertainment initially. You're thinking that because that's what the show eventually became.

[(Anonymous)]

I haven't seen it yet, but people seem to think it's pretty good. What specifically is your gripe with it?

[alwaysbeenasmiler]

Being what it was, I think that it did well enough. Remember who the series was being sold to-- and all while eschewing the gratuitous sex scenes that other series were banking on!

Edit: And my demographic, I mean women who enjoy afternoon tea and little slices of a bygone era-- that's why I like the series.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree. It's such a pretty show, but so, so, so stupid. I couldn't stand any of the characters. And the lords of the house being all chummy-chummy with the staff was such a BLATANT LIE. I just don't get how it's so popular, I never made it past the first season and I really tried, plus I have a high tolerance for nonsense in pretty TV shows.

[(Anonymous)]

"such a BLATANT LIE"

Evidence? Apart from "all upper class people back the amused themselves by shooting peasantry and raping servant girls" modern assumptions?

/still has the letter my grandfather's employer sent my grandmother on his death

[(Anonymous)]

A few of the incidents in the first series, like the guy dying in Mary's bed and his body being smuggled back to his own room were lifted from the history of Highclere Castle, the place where the show was filmed.

[(Anonymous)]

Well then, OP, what are your recs for better period dramas set in roughly that time? Genuinely interested here.

[(Anonymous)]

+1 Give us some recs, OP.

[alwaysbeenasmiler]

Thirded! Recs please!

[(Anonymous)]

If you're set on examples roughly in the same period, then Gosford Park did it better. If you're open to costume dramas in general, North and South (the Elizabeth Gaskell one, not the American Civil War one), any of the BBC Jane Austen adaptations, Wives and Daughters, The Last Kingdom, Endeavour, Peak Blinders, Bleak House, Partners in Crime, Foyle's War,The Crown, The Forsyte Saga, The Madness of King George, Doctor Thorne, Wolf Hall, Bletchley Circle, Anne of Green Gables, Rebecca...

[(Anonymous)]

I get what you're saying and I think you're critique is justified. It's by no means a realistic show. However, that it is a soap opera with pretty costumes and scenery is exactly the reason why I enjoyed it.

[(Anonymous)]

If you think seasons one and two were soap opera-ish, the soaps in your world are about thirty times better than the soaps in mine.

The writing being fairly good was actually one of the main things I liked about the show in its early seasons. I guess rigorous historical accuracy just isn't the be all and end all for me when it comes to what constitutes "good writing."

[arcadiaego]

A fantasy of the British upper classes where everyone knew their place, the servants were friendly with and grateful to their employers and there's one shady gay character who never has sex is always going to sell well, sadly. I wouldn't mind if there hadn't been so much hype about it and if it hadn't won so many awards over other more deserving candidates. There's just something grim about it having been so popular in Cameron's Britain. (Though the same argument has been made many times re. Brideshead Revisited and Thatcher and I love Brideshead Revisited, soooo).

There have been many much more interesting or diverse period dramas made lately (Ripper Street, Penny Dreadful, Black Sails, probably others I don't personally know of, even Taboo was an *attempt* at something better) which gives me hope that the bonnets and country houses monopoly is on the way out.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes! Thank you! This! All of this! This is why the show bothered me and I couldn't get past it in spite of the costume porn. The romanticized classism was nauseating and the gay guy didn't sit well with me at all. I wanted to watch for him because gay characters are so underrepresented, but I just couldn't stomach that.

[(Anonymous)]

and there's one shady gay character who never has sex

I feel like this argument would have weight in a show that has explicit sex scenes like Game of Thrones (which of course has a gazillion male gaze-y scenes, while Renly and Loras get one piddling little scene that only has implied sex), but everything in Downton is chaste to the point where even the straight characters barely have sex, or even make out.

Also, Penny Dreadful was awful and fell apart in season 2. lmao at someone implying that it's "diverse". Ethan and Dorian's moment getting cut off just as it's beginning amidst all the explicit heterosexual sex scenes sure is progressive and different, huh?

[tree_and_leaf]

Brideshead is obviously written from a conservative and somewhat snobbish perspective,* but it's also written by someone who was there (and who was painfully aware that he wasn't one of the aristocracy and that it made a difference), so it doesn't have the same element of - I dunno. Wish-fulfilment about the society (as opposed to wish-fulfilment about one's personal career?)

Also, whatever you think of Waugh's Catholicism, I think the fact that the story was about something other than 'wallowing in the life of a stately home and how mostly lovely it was' helped.

* And I love both the book and the Granada adaptation.

[(Anonymous)]

"gay character who never has sex "

Hey, I'm gonna stop you there and remind you that the gay character fucked Daredevil in Season 1. Lucky fellow.

[(Anonymous)]

I marathoned the whole thing a little while after the series finale. I never expected it to be anything BUT a beautifully-shot costume porn soap opera.

But one thing that it did, that almost never happens, is that the older female characters got to have romantic plotlines that were treated as seriously as the "main" characters' romances. Seriously, other than Golden Girls, when was the last time a septuagenarian woman was allowed to have a romance? Let alone a love triangle! Older MEN get to have romantic plots all the time--but the women involved are half their age. Bruce Willis gets to woo Megan Fox, not Helen Mirren. So the fact that Isobel, Violet, Mrs. Patmore, and Mrs. Hughes, and to a lesser extent Cora, got to have valid romances is a pretty big deal, IMO.

[(Anonymous)]

Huh, I just finished marathoning this series for the first time today. I agree it's soap opera-ish and doesn't have the best writing, but goddamn, do I love some of the characters. Especially Violet and Barrow <3

[(Anonymous)]

I think the fact that it's "a soap opera with pretty costumes and scenery" is *exactly* the reason so many people love it so much (or is that just me?). I mean, do people love Game of Thrones because they all believe it's hands-down the best example of the fantasy genre? Sometimes, you just want to be entertained.

[(Anonymous)]

Before Downton Abbey, my only real experience with the British upstairs/downstairs period-drama thing was The Remains of the Day (movie only), which shows the system falling apart. I'm pretty ignorant on historical accuracy, but I still didn't go into Downton thinking it was an accurate representation of a perfect utopia. I'd hesitate to assume most people did, either. It's like assuming everyone must think the antebellum U.S. South was some kind of paradise because that's how it looked in Gone with the Wind.