Downton Abbey

Downton Abbey (2010) 

A dash of Gosford Park, a dash of “In the Castle and Beneath the Castle" by Božena Němcová, a dash of Austen, a dash of Brontë Sisters, a dash of black and white, a dash of Oprah and quite a big dash of sarcasm and British humor - dry as a glass (well, more like a bottle) of extra dry gin. That goes for season one. The second season is a bit Esmeralda and, more than anything else, an overly-sweet soft drink, which in the end unwittingly becomes a farce employing almost all existing soap opera clichés. Simply a parody of itself. The only thing that saves its honor is the (un)Christmas special 2011, which raises hope that the next series could return "to its roots". This was confirmed primarily in the “beneath the castle" storyline. The “castle" line at the beginning remained unintentionally ridiculous. After that, however, it bounces back from the bottom and, all in all, season three is once again an excellent old-world series; which is also true of the Christmas episode of the 2012 season, which, while pushing things forward more than the entire season, is terribly... Dumb. Season four does not meet the quality standard of the previous seasons; on the one hand, it painfully lacks a central connecting storyline, or at least a hint of one, and then there are just too many characters. And each character in every episode is given two to three minutes in the sun; for some it is too little, and for others it is way too much. It jumps from character to character without rhyme or reason, and often times nothing comes of it because most of them are not given sufficient space. And it's most noticeable in the 2013 Christmas episode, where there are about 100 characters and... And nothing comes of it; no drama, nothing. This is also true of the entire fifth season, which is merely a spinning wheel parody of itself and in which all the problems of the previous series are accentuated rather than solved. P.S.: Despite the excellent dubbing, there is no point in watching it other than in the original version, which in this case is an integral part of it. | S1: 5/5 | S2: 2/5 | S3: 4/5 | S4: 3/5 | S5: 2/5 | (27.02.2012)