As a queer television scholar, I first became interested in Downton Abbey because of the character of Thomas Barrow (played by Rob James-Collier). The show’s treatment of his sexuality became particularly interesting to me in the third season, when he is outed as gay but not banished from the Downton estate. I started wondering through what lens is this character informed? My own research places Thomas, as well as a cluster of queer characters that have emerged on contemporary television set in the historical past, as informed by post-gay ideology. I also have argued that the insertion of gay themes in television programming set in the historical past is a strategy used by showrunners and industry insiders to capitalize on the interests of contemporary “savvy” viewers. I’m also interested in how the Downton Abbey merchandising empire is spared the fate of being equated with “crass commercialism.” Similarly, Downton is rarely compared to the less prestigious television “soap” format (with which it shares much in common). I argue that the show’s appeal to upper class taste aesthetics as well as its role as a form of gay consumer culture has significant impact on its prestige. That said, Thomas has become a fascinating character if not for anything other than the way internet-based fan communities have united to recuperate him from his reputation as conniving evil-doer.

Sponsored by local public television network Twin Cities Public Television (TPT), the series premiere event was also the launch of TPT’s Rewire, “TPT’s spunky new project that loves the internet (and PBS) as much as you do.” During the screening, attendees were invited to participate in the “second screen” experience of Twitter fandom with the “MustTalkTV” hashtag. Although the TPT/Rewire premiere event was straightforwardly celebratory in one sense (of the aristocracy, of the show’s conservative leanings), the attendee’s enthusiastic dual-participation (both on-site and virtual) complexly registered as earnest, campy and ironic. That TPT/Rewire’s rebranding efforts hinged on the uniquely popular Downton Abbey, a culturally elite British import, speaks to the shifting definitions of “popular” and “elite” in today’s post-network television era.

Before the screening of Downton Abbey, a representative of TPT announced Rewire’s new initiative to host monthly television-centered “book clubs.” The event, “Must Talk TV: A Book Club for Binge Watchers,” promotes itself as akin to a previous event series “Books and Bars,” where attendees presumably gathered to discuss books over a couple of beers. But this new event, Rewire assures us, does not require “all that pesky reading.” On the event website the host prompts potential attendees with a suggestion, “Let’s treat these modern day TV dramas like the high art and literature they’ve aspired to be.”

Along with my dissertation advisor and a handful of my colleagues, I attended the inaugural event of the “Must Talk TV” event series focusing on Downton Abbey – future events will feature House of Cards, The Bletchley Circle, Game of Thrones and Mad Men. The event was moderated by a host, who prompted the room with a series of fast-paced questions that had to do with identifying one’s favorite character, recounting why one started watching the show, or concerned with the details about one’s personal viewing practices. I found that it was a difficult conversation to participate in, mostly because I am ambivalent about my role as a Downton Abbey fan. Sure, I love and appreciate Maggie Smith and her one-liners, have a fondness for Daisy and Mrs. Padmore, cried when they killed off Sybil… but mostly I watch with a certain amount of apprehensive distance. My hope is that by tuning in week to week I might better understand Downton Abbey as a cultural phenomenon.

TPT/Rewire’s “book club” event seems to be an attempt to cultivate a particular kind of fan and/or a particular kind of community around television fandom. The kind of fan or fan community where “binge-watching” is elevated to levels of prestige and participants do not have to bother with “all that pesky reading.” As such, the rebranding of TPT/Rewire reveals much about the way public television is implicated amidst shifting questions of quality, worth, taste, class and legitimacy.

The show turned from the usual Sunday night period travails of the upper classes to chronicle a primarily working-class community living in overcrowded tenements, where children played in bombsites and washing was strung across the streets. However, the community was presented through the eyes of the middle-class midwives, with new arrival Jenny as our protagonist. This world was also served with lashings of sentimentality, the odd quirky nun and comedy pratfalls off bicycles (utilising the comedic skills of sitcom star Miranda Hart as the bumbling, frightfully posh Chummy). This is 1950s poverty spit-shined and filtered through a warm golden glow – even a Catholic home for unwed mothers is all white light and a kindly priest (until they wrench the baby from its hysterical teen prostitute mother). There is abrasiveness alongside the comforting nostalgia – brawls on the street, unwed mothers, rotting housing, deaths in childbirth. But the midwives are our focus, the births and mothers come and go. As Willa Paskin at Salon noted, this is a medical procedural; we deal with the dangerous birth of the week, the midwives move on. But this is also part of its pleasure – these are young women with careers, occasionally saving lives, not sitting around in drawing rooms waiting for someone to marry them.

But why didn’t Call the Midwife’s British success translate to PBS? Though it had solid critical praise, particularly for Hart, the lack of twitter buzz was marked after its decent 1.5 million premiere. I’d like to make a few suggestions, the first being politics. US critics seemed uncomfortable with its depiction of the NHS – Mo Ryan suggested it ‘strays into almost comical propaganda now and then’, whilst the New York Times felt ‘at times the series sounds like a public service ad, extolling the benefits of the system’. Interestingly, Bitch magazine used Midwife as a framework to talk through public health issues in the run up to the election (‘What Nuns Know about Reproductive Justice’ is perhaps my favourite headline about the series).

For all of Mdiwife’s tendency to marginalise the working-class point of view, this is a progressive history demonstrating the gains made by ‘socialised medicine’, to use the menacing US term. So is there a certain degree of distance, is not a collective history easily transferred for US audiences? (Perhaps its soft-focus post-war urban community also fits awkwardly with the nostalgic US national imaginary of the 1950s as a middle-class small town?). It is useful here to bring Downton Abbey back into the mix, and whisper that maybe America just prefers its British period drama conservative? For all its lip service to progressive stories, Downton maintains a strong conservative ideology and belief in the class system. It may well chronicle the (relatively cushy) lives of Downton’s staff, but for its writer Julian Fellowes (married to a duchess, recently made a Lord by the Conservative government, for whom he is a high profile donor) a good, sympathetic working-class person is one who is quiet, loyal and knows their place.

 In addition, the urban setting of Call the Midwife cannot compete with Downton’s display of British heritage in a series of dully-composed wide shots (when in doubt, cut to a shot of the house) made possible by co-funding from NBC Universal. I’d also suggest that Call the Midwife lacks the romantic melodrama of Downton – Jennie is a touch dull compared to Lady Mary’s repressed yearnings. Yes, melodrama, as underneath its surface veneer of ‘quality,’ Downton is popular, soapy entertainment from the UK’s biggest commercial broadcaster, where it sits next to X-Factor (though Fellowes could learn a lot about dialogue, serial storytelling and trusting your audience from the UK soap operas). At heart it is Gainsborough rather than Austen, with the Guardian episode blog awarding the ‘Golden eyebrow award’ for the week’s best aghast reaction shots. In Midwife the melodrama is focused around the births and deaths, rather than the interpersonal storytelling (though Chummy’s tentative romance is a delight). Whilst it offers a more skilled televisual storyteller in Heidi Thomas, Midwife lacks Downton’s heightened, messy, soap opera and sumptuous celebration of aristocracy. Poverty, sweat and tears kind of harsh the buzz, no matter how prettily it’s turned out.

The disparity is a source of a great deal of online outrage given the reputation of Louie—which some expected had a chance to break through—and Parks and Recreation—which was nominated last year—among both critics and the people who follow them. However, it reveals a consistent tension between the part and the whole when it comes to evaluating television in this capacity. While the writers who decide the nominations in this category are pushed to focus on individual segments, those nominating series or performers are supposed to be focusing on entire seasons; of course, this requires them to have seen entire seasons. It’s no secret that most Emmy voters don’t watch as much television as critics or other engaged viewers, which often leads to presumptions that they don’t actually bother watching anything at all.

However, let’s give the Emmy voters a bit more credit: instead of watching nothing, what if they watch the episodes provided for them? At this stage in the race, networks send screeners to Emmy voters, but they usually only send a representative sample, selecting a handful of episodes—while networks have sent out entire seasons before (which helped DirecTV break into the Emmy race with Friday Night Lights), generally speaking even the more diligent Emmy voters who sit down to watch the material sent to them will only see a sliver of the seasons under consideration.

On this note, allow me to float a theory regarding the big story of this year’s awards, which is PBS’ Downton Abbey dominating the Drama Series categories. I discussed the series’ problematic definition as a Miniseries during last year’s awards (a discussion we could have again regarding FX’s category fraud with American Horror Story), and PBS managed a stunning collection of nominations moving into the main race, including six acting nominations (most among Drama Series), Writing, Directing, and a nomination in Outstanding Drama Series (knocking off the only commercial broadcast series in contention, CBS’ The Good Wife). While many predicted the series to break into the race after its success last year and its increased profile in season two, supporting nominations for Mr. Bates, Mr. Carson, and Anna were never part of the conversation.

For me, there are two factors to consider here. First, while the series is now in its proper category, there’s a certain degree of genius in PBS’ accidental Emmy gamesmanship: by launching first in the safety of Miniseries, Downton took advantage of the prestigious but sparse nature of the Movie/Miniseries categories, gaining considerable profile in “high-class” categories before trying to break into the series race. While shows like Mad Men had to share the Drama Series narrative with shows like Friday Night Lights and Boardwalk Empire last year, Downton swept Outstanding Miniseries/Movie and the attached writing and directing categories despite strong competition from the HBO machine and Mildred Pierce.

However, more importantly, PBS treated Downton like a Miniseries even while submitting it in the Drama Series category. They only submitted a single episode for consideration in Writing/Directing—the season-ending Christmas special that brought the season’s storylines to a romantic and tragic conclusion respectively— where other series submit 8-10. However, they simultaneously sent the entire season to Emmy voters, meaning that those who desired to consume the whole series could do so (more quickly than with longer runs for shows like Mad Men or Homeland). Its ability to be both easily reduced and easily consumed makes for a strong combination, and it seems to have worked: the presence of Michelle Dockery—prominent in the Christmas Special—over Oscar nominee Elizabeth McGovern (who was nominated last year), and the dual nominations for Brendan Coyle—whose Mr. Bates was wrongfully convicted of Murder in the episode—and Joanne Froggatt—playing his wife—would both suggest that the Christmas Special was at the forefront of voters’ minds when they cast their ballots, meaning that voters either started at the end or made it there eventually.

I raise this point not to cast aspersions on Downton Abbey’s nominations—although my punny title may betray my thoughts on the series’ second season—so much as to understand the context in which they appear in such number. While some could suggest its presence in these categories as a win for populist, non-commercial television, that its reputation was born in the highbrow Movie/Miniseries category frames its presence here very differently. Additionally, it is a presence that could very well be framed by a single episode, either as a standalone installment or an emphatic end note to a short-run season viewed in its entirety.

At this point in the race, the Emmy Awards become all about selection: actors and actresses submit a single episode of exemplary work (which is aired in its entirety for Lead Acting nominees and edited into only scenes featuring the nominee in Supporting), while series submit three sets of two episodes with each Emmy voter receiving one of the three at random. While this does mean that no show is ever judged based on an entire season, and no actor is ever considered based on a larger body of work, it does mean that Downton’s focus on a single episode or an entire season is no longer so easy to control—whether they have three sets of two episodes that can equally wow voters now becomes the question of the hour.

[For more analysis of the awards, see News for TV Majors’ Roundup post.]

From the Tumblr "Downton Abbey Confessions."

Downton Abbey has attained a significant cultural position. Indeed, this British miniseries (or is it a miniseries?) about the aristocratic Crawley family during the Edwardian era in England has captivated critics and viewers. Originally broadcast in the UK on ITV in 2009, Downton Abbey‘s first season aired on PBS in January 2010. It went on to win 6 Emmys, including the award for “Outstanding Miniseries or Movie,” a triumph it repeated this week at the Golden Globes. The January 8th PBS premiere of Downton‘s second season garnered 4.2 million viewers, which is 18% higher than season one’s ratings, and exceeds Mad Men‘s viewers. Needless to say, Downton Abbey has proved to be a hit for PBS, who co-produces Downton with British production house Carnival. This production context extends Masterpiece Theatre’s history of financing and distributing British period pieces. Moreover, Downton Abbey‘s cultural significance is evident in the various ways fans (known as Abbeyites) engage with the show and with the past it mediates for us.

For instance, Downton Abbey viewing parties have become trendy among affluent Abbeyites. Some of these viewing parties are quite extravagant, and offer guests an Edwardian feast and encourage period costumes. Some simpler parties offer cucumber sandwiches and drinking games, where you might take a shot every time Maggie Smith’s dowager makes a cutting remark.  Want to throw a fete for your friends? Check out this DIY Downton Abbey party slideshow. These parties highlight how viewers attempt to recreate a time period they have never experienced, and know primarily through TV like Downton Abbey. Thus, as they imbue their 21st Century lives with Edwardian fashions and culinary dishes, Abbeyites become temporal tourists of a sort. And yet this nostaglic tourism, is, of course for a time period wholly constructed for them by Downton Abbey, and this is problematic in many ways, the least of which are the historical inaccuracies of the show. But I will address this later, first a few more examples of Abbeyite fandom.

From the Tumblr "Telegraphs from Downton Abbey."

A slew of Downton Abbey themed Tumblrs have sprung up ranging from the tame to the obscene. There is the The Lamps of Downton Abbey, which*gasp* allow fans to repurpose scenes from the show that include lamps. There is also Quite So, Downton Abbey, which seems to focus on straightforward fandom of specific dialogue/scenes, particularly those that relate to the conflicted romance between characters Mary and Matthew.  A variety of Downton Abbey Tumblrs exist, but I would certainly be remiss if I did not mention one of the smutty ones, like Telegrams From Downton which, as the picture to your right might suggest, imposes more adult themes, like sex or getting trashed, onto images from the series. These memes point to the mutability of television storylines and the transmedia nature of Downton Abbey fandom. Furthermore, the irony of the memes is derived, in great part (lamps memes withstanding) from the juxtaposition of Downton’s visual simulacrum of Edwardian England with more modern slang or themes (again, see the vagina-themed meme above).

Fans  also carve out their own narratives within the Downton Abbey in fan vids. The vid above, “Charlie & Sybil,” edits footage of Sybil from Downton and the character Charlie from recent film Brideshead Revisted  to construct a love story between the two characters from different texts. This crossover vid points to the depth of fan engagement, as well as the intertextuality of Downton Abbey, as the vid’s author makes sense of the show through understanding another period piece, Brideshead.  A range of Downton Abbey vids exist, and “Mary & Matthew” is a more straightforward mash-up of intimate moments between the show’s conflict-ridden lovers. Do not watch this vid if you hate U2 or children’s choirs, as it features a cover of “With or Without You” sung by kids, and has been altered to possess a more contrasted, sepia tone. Here again, fans make sense of the sentimental moments intertextually through popular music which the vid creator may associate with intense romantic entanglements. These vids subvert the original show by creating montages out of context and eking out new meanings for fans. Yet in many ways they work as promotional paratexts which work to heighten audiences engagement with Downton Abbey.

As fans engage with Downton Abbey, the show mediates the past for viewers. As I briefly mentioned above, several historians have publicly to denounced the program’s accuracy. These accusations of historical inaccuracies belie the constructed nature of histories. Historians and some critics also seem to react to the soapy, melodramatic treatment of Edwardian Britain, for this second season surpasses the drama of season one’s Pumakian interludes with sex, pregnancy, inter class romance, scandal, dramatic injury and murder trials.  I am more apprehensive by what I see as an unabashed and unquestioning love of monarchy and an affirmation of aristocratic power and benevolence. Yes, there is a (superficial) Upstairs Downstairs – style engagement with servant life. Yet the show does not interrogate the power differential between lord and butler, and in fact constructs a sort of idolatrous paternalism wherein the aristocracy is shown to be stewards of the populace. No where is this more evident than when Downton  becomes a military hospital. Iris Carmon unpacks this in her article “Why Liberals Love Downton Abbey,” critiquing Downton‘s superficial treatment of class and political power. Downton Abbey‘s popularity increases with each weekly PBS installment, the third season begins shooting in February (hence my hesitation to call this a miniseries), and there is even talk of a Downton film.

In many ways, I see  Downton Abbey in itself a work of fandom. Creator/writer Julian Fellowes is admittedly a fan (and member, through marriage) of British aristocracy, and his novels Snobs and Past Imperfect, as well as his film Gosford Park,  all pay homage at the alter of Britain’s elites. Downton could thus be seen as the fantastical product of an aristocracy fanboy. But the show’s prominence and wide distribution also point to its cultural power.  As I have outlined, Downton Abbey‘s fans participate in an assortment of social activities that, I would argue, play with, critique, but, I argue, ultimately celebrate the program. What does it mean, then, for viewers to make sense of history through a show which constructs an imaginary account that privileges the ruling class so unequivocally? I do not know the answer, however this particular lens on history will certainly continue with Downton’s third season, and Fellowes upcoming miniseries Titatic, which will air on ITV in Britian and ABC in the US this April.

Those who follow the awards closely were less surprised, aware that AMC’s decision to delay the start of the fourth season until this month meant that they were skipping an eligibility cycle (as this year’s cycle ended in early June). While we are often quick to point out the flaws in the Emmy nomination process, lamenting the absence of our favorite programs, often the nominations are guided as much by these kinds of technicalities as by voter subjectivities.

The eligibility cycle is one of those technicalities that makes sense: it was chosen to reflect the traditional broadcast season, and was introduced in 1961 in part due to complaints in 1957 when Nanette Fabray won an award for The Sid Caesar Show despite having left the show late in its 1955-56 season. While cable scheduling complicates this structure, which results in Breaking Bad sitting out this year’s awards, it remains the most logical and functional way of determining eligibility.

Not many people are aware of the rules surrounding eligibility, like what happens with a show that straddles the eligibility period, in part because they rarely ever truly matter (although, for the record, if a show airs at least six episodes before the cutoff date, the subsequent episodes can also be submitted so long as there are less than six episodes). However, a quick glance at the nominations might raise certain questions about eligibility rules, given that they appear to be somewhat askew.

Case in point: Margo Martindale, who was billed as a guest star on Justified in its second season, was nominated for Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. Meanwhile, her co-star Jeremy Davies was also billed as a guest star, but was nominated for Guest Actor in a Drama Series. Another example: Cloris Leachman, who appeared in nearly every episode of Raising Hope’s first season, is nominated for Guest Actress in a Comedy Series where she competes with Kristin Chenoweth, who appeared in one episode of Glee – both were billed as guest stars.

While broad eligibility is something that the Emmys regulate, actors can submit in whatever category they would like (unless a series regular tries to submit in guest). Rob Lowe, a recent addition to the cast of Parks and Recreation, submitted as a Lead Actor largely based on his previous experience as a lead actor (or, at the very least, his previous experience pretending he was a Lead Actor on shows where he was not; see: The West Wing, where he also submitted as Lead alongside Martin Sheen).

The Emmys don’t have any rules about what constitutes a Lead or a Supporting role (and eliminated their “under six episodes” rule for billed guest stars back in 2007), believing – I presume – that the nominating process will sort that out: even if Lowe had been nominated by popular vote, the jury screening his submitted episode (which happens after you’re nominated) would have seen that it was a supporting performance, and chosen someone who was truly the lead in their show.

This presumes, of course, that the voters are paying attention at all. The oft-cited case of Ellen Burstyn’s 2006 nomination for a 14-second performance in Mrs. Harris reveals the trend towards established stars earning nominations based solely on their name, a trend driven primarily by the fact that most Emmy voters probably don’t watch everything they vote for. It’s how you get nominees like Oscar-nominee and Emmy-winner Paul Giamatti, who was nominated as a Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or TV Movie for a glorified cameo (albeit one that certainly takes up more than 14 seconds of screen time, meeting the new 5% rule instated after Burstyn’s nomination) in HBO’s Too Big to Fail.

We can chalk up most of these acting eligibility oddities to a harmless combination of strategy and technicality, with a little bit of voter ignorance thrown in – no harm, no foul. However, a larger issue of eligibility can be chalked up to a transatlantic divide. PBS garnered nominations for both Downton Abbey and Sherlock: A Study in Pink, while BBC America found success with Luther. All three are British imports, and more importantly all three are part of what the British consider continuing series: Downtown returns for a second series in the fall, Sherlock recently finished filming a second set of three 90-minute episodes, and Luther just aired its second series this summer. By Emmy standards, however, they were considered Miniseries (or, in the case of Sherlock, a TV Movie), a fundamental shift in form allowed based on different standards (you need six episodes to be considered a series by the Emmys) and broadcast inconsistencies (with Downton Abbey‘s seven episodes turned into four to fit the PBS Masterpiece timeslot).

It raises some logistical questions: when Luther and Downton Abbey return to America, will PBS and BBC America have to give them new names in order to submit them again in the Miniseries categories? They submit in these categories in part because they’re less competitive (none of these programs had a chance in the Drama Series categories), but how does this structural mutation affect their future chances?

While we can discuss whether the Emmys are relevant, and whether it’s worth getting up in arms about this snub or that undeserved nomination, I always find myself drawn to issues like eligibility that raise questions which go beyond “What was the best?” to “How was the best defined for those who answer that question?” It is in the latter we will find answers (albeit answers sometimes lacking in logic), while the former offers only acrimony and more questions.

Watch the full episode. See more Masterpiece.

Masterpiece Theatre is premiering new mini-series Downton Abbey tomorrow night on PBS.  Produced for ITV in Britain, the show first aired there in October, 2010 and is available for viewers in the UK on iTunes and DVD. If, like myself, you have not been able to procure a copy for yourself, all that is available until tomorrow night is the PBS preview (embedded above) replete with long establishing shots of a large British country estate, long, corseted frocks, and Maggie Smith as a vexed dowager.  Possessing all the characteristics of a typical British period piece mini-series, Downton is not based upon a piece of literature. Rather, it is created and written by author and film scribe Julian Fellowes, whose films Gosford Park and Young Victoria, along with his books Snobs and Past Imperfect, all centered around the subject of British aristocracy, usually from the perspective of an outsider. Thus, though Downton Abbey seems to participate in the genre of British literature period-piece mini-series, it has been entirely crafted within the perspective of our contemporary neoliberal political environment. I haven’t seen the show myself, but I anticipate that it will have implicit feminist, post-colonial, and social class sentiments.

Downton is the latest in a long history of popular British mini-series exports to PBS, such as 1967’s The Forsyte Saga, 1981 ‘s Brideshead Revisited (famously starring a young Jeremy Irons) and 2001’s The Way We Live Now, to name a few of the more popular ones. I focus this post on British period piece mini-series because it is my impression that, for the most part, their popularity often outweighs film versions. This is, at least in part, attributed to the constraints of a two-hour format to fit in long novels, and the para-social relationships viewers establish tuning to episodes of a mini-series. I may be off on this last point: I have not done any formal research, but the latest mainstream film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice faded from popular conscious as quickly as it left cinemas, while the 1995 BBC mini-series continues to be extremely popular. This is not to say that Brit-lit period piece films do not continue to be popular – but it is my impression that long-term fandom remains decidedly the domain of Brit-lit mini-series.

I remember waiting with baited breath for each installment of the BBC’s 1995 Pride & Prejudice when it aired on A&E in 1996. I taped the second and third installments of the three-piece series (in the UK it was six-episodes), and watched them over and over again on VHS.  This incarnation of Pride & Prejudice was highly successful, winning a BAFTA and an Emmy, and continues to be widely admired. It has a large following on Facebook (which is baffling, considering that it was released in a pre-Facebook era) and was recently remastered for a DVD released last April, which, according to fans, allows you to see the drops of water on Colin Firth’s chest during his infamous bathing scene. That fans are still blogging about a 15-year old mini-series points to its continuing role in shaping viewers attitudes and actions.

We see this materialize as a large base of fans attempts to recreate or participate in customs presented in these period pieces. I see this fandom as different from sub-cultures like Steampunk in that it romanticizes and attempts to reconstruct a precise historical era and way of life, instead of constructing alternate histories or incorporating science fiction/fantasy. That is not to say that period-piece fandom is not entirely fantastical.

Fans of the Regency era gowns in 1995’s Pride and Prejudice can order patterns online, and dance at the Bal Masque at the annual Jane Austen Society of North America.  There is a large selection of online clothiers who sell period piece costumes, such as Gentleman’s Emporium, and I’ve observed that these sites seem to mainly offer Regency and Victorian apparel, the usual setting of these period-piece mini-series.  I am not suggesting that this is mutually exclusive (mini-series fans are not all buying costumes and having Victorian tea parties). However, they are certainly related, especially considering that fans’ primary visual acquaintance with this lifestyle has been via constructed representations of television mini-series and films.

The market for period costumes, patterns, and other paraphernalia (etiquette books, or ephemera, etc.) is based solely of fans, among which I must include myself, who attempt not only to recreate a past unavailable, but nonexistent. These mini-series construct variegated representations of white, primarily heterosexual, aristocratic life. And though narratives include feminist implications when we see the entailment of estates away from females to male cousins and the like, the dominant patriarchal structure is relatively unquestioned. Tomorrow night’s Downton Abbey program has been such a huge success, that ITV has contracted a second mini-series to air in the UK later this year.  Which begs the question, as Downton Abbey‘s first series is about to premiere on U.S. television, why do these fantasies of bygone eras continue to capture our imagination?