'Downton' cruises onto Blu-ray
Downton Abbey: Season 2
You can go back to the past to discover the future — and you don’t need a nutty professor’s DeLorean to do it. Instead, there are three television series that will accomplish the deed with exceptional grace and intelligence. And some sex and violence.
The three are: Downton Abbey, Boardwalk Empire and Mildred Pierce. That is one British entry and two American.
Each is for mature audiences. Each is a period piece set during the first third of the 20th Century. Each is populated with great characters, superbly acted. Each is a distillation of dramatic situations. Each contains insight into social change that, studied closely, relates to how we live today.
Plus all three are newly available in the home entertainment market.
DOWNTON ABBEY
Downton Abbey: Season 2 just debuted as a three-disc Blu-ray. It is a perfect complement to the existing two-disc Blu-ray with the seven episodes of season one (although the cover simply says Downton Abbey, with no reference to the season). These are the original British broadcast versions. There are also DVD versions of both seasons but I don’t have them for review and cannot vouch for their quality.
The Season 2 Blu-ray contains eight episodes plus the holiday special, Christmas at Downton Abbey. As with Season 1, the extras are informative. You get face time with writer-creator Julian Fellowes, who became intrigued with the machinations of the British aristocracy when developing Gosford Park for Robert Altman. Downton Abbey is set earlier and goes into the upstairs/downstairs British social system with more intensity yet similar glee.
Downton Abbey is fictional, although parts of the series are filmed at a functioning mansion, Highclere Castle in Berkshire. The first season takes us to the declaration of war in 1914, with the aristocracy still maintaining its stranglehold on British society. Season 2 leaps into the First World War in 1916, with class structures quickly eroding.
The devil, of course, is in the delicious details. The upstairs family led by the Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) is a nest of intrigue involving three daughters: Tough Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery), scheming Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael) and rebellious Lady Sybil (Jessica Brown-Findlay). Their mother is a transplanted American (Elizabeth McGovern). Their grandmother is a dowager with a wicked wit (Maggie Dame). Downstairs, servants act like an extended family, too, led by butler Charles Carson (Jim Carter) and housekeeper Elsie Hughes (Phyllis Logan).
Lives are inextricably entwined. Everyone seems very real and human, even though Fellowes admits, “It’s rather surreal actually, in a funny way, that they’re saying things that come out of your head.”
Season 1 Blu-ray extras deal with the historical context. Season 2 enhances that with close looks at fashion, romance and the wartime transformation of great houses into hospitals.
BOARDWALK EMPIRE
I have already written about the marvellous DVD and Blu-ray releases of Boardwalk Empire: The Complete First Season. Both formats are highly recommended. So is the series, conjured by Terence Winter, in league with Martin Scorsese, from a non-fiction book about criminal kingpin Enoch (Nucky) Johnson. Nucky made Prohibition sing in Atlantic City. Steve Buscemi plays him with panache. Boardwalk Empire gives us a heady insight into how the puritanical repression of alcohol — however good the motives — created a crime wave.
MILDRED PIERCE
I have also written about Todd Haynes’ expansive re-make of Mildred Pierce. I again recommend both the DVD and the Collector’s Edition, a combo pack with both DVD and Blu-ray editions of the five-part series. This shattering drama, which stars Kate Winslet, is an insight into the pre-feminist struggle of women during the Great Depression. Thanks to Haynes, it reflects directly upon the struggle of economically exploited women today.
