Thursday, January 3, 2013

Downton Abbey: Revered -- and Regurgitated

  
 I'm  writing  this  as Downton Abbey launches its  third  season.  Its fans, yours truly included,  will  eat it up. 
But the   phenomenally  successful upstairs-downstairs  TV  soap  opera   also has its  detractors,   most amusingly  so   James Parker  in  the  February  issue of   The Atlantic Monthly.  His article  Brideshead  Regurgitated    sees  the  show  as   a  sad  fall  from   the  more literary  Brideshead  Revisited. of  many seasons past.
Parker  won't prevent me  or   the  legion of  fans  from watching  Season  3.   Besides   quite  a few chuckles he  also   dished up   two  delicious similes,  one about the  dialogue and  the other about the "emonic lady's maid  O'Brien's  hairdo. 
Though Parker admits that the   dialogue   "spins light-operatically along in the service of multiplying plotlets  an  is  not too hard on the ear"   he  does warn that. . .
  Now and again a line lands like a tray of dropped spoons.
 As  for  O’Brien's  hair. . .
 Her hairstyle consisting of two ringlets perched on her forehead like horns

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