--- title: "Downton Abbey" year: 2010 kind: "series" canonical: "https://film.one/tv/downton-abbey" fi1m_score: 75 critics_score: 76 critics_reviews: 8 published: "2026-09-17T01:47:15.213495+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T01:47:15.875937+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Downton Abbey (2010) Created by Julian Fellowes · 1h 06m · MPA TV-PG · Drama **Fi1m score: 75** · Critics 76 from 8 reviews *In a sentence:* A soap opera in a very good hat, and the hat is doing a fair amount of the work > Julian Fellowes’s country-house drama is soap opera with excellent manners: lines people repeat, a cast that never lets it down and a house that does half the acting. It explains itself too often and goes soft on its masters, but the first two series are proper Sunday-evening television. ## Synopsis It is April 1912 at Downton Abbey, a great house in Yorkshire, and the morning post brings news that the Titanic has gone down with the heir to the estate aboard. Robert Crawley (Hugh Bonneville), the Earl of Grantham, has three daughters and no son, and the entail means the house and the fortune of his American wife Cora (Elizabeth McGovern) will pass to a distant cousin, Matthew Crawley, a solicitor from Manchester. Robert’s mother Violet (Maggie Smith) wants the entail broken; his eldest daughter Mary (Michelle Dockery) wants not to be handed to whoever inherits. Below stairs, Charles Carson (Jim Carter) and Mrs. Hughes (Phyllis Logan) run the household, Anna Smith (Joanne Froggatt) does the bedrooms, and a new valet, John Bates (Brendan Coyle), arrives with a limp and a past. ## Review Julian Fellowes had written one country house already, [*Gosford Park*](https://film.one/film/gosford-park) in 2001, and *Downton Abbey* is that film given six series and a change of sympathies. The film was told from the servants’ hall. The series is told from both floors, but its heart is upstairs, with a family that would rather nothing changed and is about to watch everything change. It opens in April 1912, the morning the news of the Titanic arrives, and it follows the house through the war and out the other side. The first series ran to seven episodes from 26 September 2010; the sixth and last finished in 2015. It is a soap opera with excellent manners, and we mean that kindly. The plots are about wills, marriages, secrets in bedrooms and letters that should not have been sent. What lifts it is that Fellowes writes lines people want to repeat, and he has a cast that can land them. We would put the first two series in front of anyone with a Sunday evening to fill and no strong objection to the aristocracy. The later ones we would hand over with a shrug. Maggie Smith’s Violet Crawley, the dowager countess, is the reason most people came and the reason most stayed. She enters rooms as if they have disappointed her and leaves them having won. We laughed out loud, in the second episode, at her asking what a weekend is, and we laughed because Smith does not play it as a joke; Violet has simply never needed the word. Michelle Dockery’s Mary is the harder part and the better performance, a clever young woman who knows exactly how narrow her options are and is furious about it in the only way the period allows, which is quietly. Hugh Bonneville makes Robert decent, a little slow and easily hurt, which is the right way to play a man whose whole job is to own a house. Downstairs, Jim Carter’s Carson believes in the family more than the family does, and Phyllis Logan’s Mrs. Hughes is the only adult in the building. Joanne Froggatt gives Anna Smith a steadiness the later series lean on. The scene that got us, more than a scene about a valet keeping his job has any right to, comes at the end of the first episode, when Brendan Coyle’s Bates, a man with a limp whom the household has decided is a liability, is put in a car for the station and Robert runs down the drive after it. Bonneville plays the run as embarrassment rather than heroism, and that is why it works. The house is Highclere Castle in Hampshire, standing in for Yorkshire, and the three cinematographers, David Katznelson, David Marsh and Gavin Struthers, shoot it two ways. Upstairs is high, pale and far apart. Downstairs is lamps, stoves and a camera that hurries along the corridor behind whoever is carrying the tray. The editors, Nick McPhee, Alex Mackie, John Wilson and Steve Singleton, cut between the two floors dozens of times an hour, and that cut is the programme’s rhythm: a remark at dinner, then the kitchen hearing about it. John Lunn’s score is a piano figure that climbs and never quite arrives, played over a title sequence that opens on the back end of a Labrador walking towards the house. The faults are real. The entail, which stops the estate passing to a daughter, is explained so often in the first two episodes that we could have sat an exam on it. Fellowes cannot help liking his masters: the servants who love the family are good, the two who resent it are schemers, and the programme never wonders whether the second lot have a point. The plotting reaches for the lurid when it gets nervous, and a turn in the third episode that we will not describe belongs in a farce and is played dead straight. It works anyway, which tells you how sure the cast are. Against [*Upstairs, Downstairs*](https://film.one/tv/upstairs-downstairs) it is glossier and less interested in the servants as people; against [*Brideshead Revisited*](https://film.one/tv/brideshead-revisited) it is not trying, and does not pretend to be. It is a PG, and at 66 minutes an episode it is the length of a pot of tea. Start at the beginning, watch two, and stop when the Christmas specials begin to feel like obligations. *Fi1m score 75, published 17 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics like it, and the reviews are warm rather than rapturous. The praise settles on the cast first: Maggie Smith’s dowager countess is singled out more than once, with Michelle Dockery close behind. Julian Fellowes’s dialogue is called witty and nuanced, and several reviewers admire how the series gives the servants’ storylines the same care as the family’s, so the two halves of the house feed each other. The setting is lavish, and nobody disputes it. The reservations gather around the opening episode. Several find it slow going, with too much talk of wills and entails and too much historical explanation before the drama starts. The Guardian, the least enthusiastic, thinks it leans on familiar period tropes, though it still finds Smith splendid. The Times calls it no Brideshead Revisited, ambitious in a middlebrow way, and the word middlebrow recurs, not always as an insult. A few note soapy or farcical moments. The spread is narrow; no one dislikes it. ### Reviews we read (8) - **The Telegraph**, Ceri Radford (85/100, inferred): The opening episode is described as a sumptuous and instantly riveting glimpse of a world on the verge of profound change, with all the classic elements of a Sunday evening costume drama perfectly in place. [Read](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/8023974/Downton-Abbey-ITV1-review.html) - **Variety**, Brian Lowry (85/100, inferred): The critic finds the series compulsively watchable and fulfilling the Masterpiece designation more faithfully than most PBS entries in years. Fellowes' witty lines and the splendid, sprawling cast stand out, with multiple absorbing storylines handled with equal care across class lines. [Read](https://variety.com/2011/tv/reviews/downton-abbey-1117944256/) - **The AV Club**, Meredith Blake (80/100, inferred): The critic finds the US premiere of the series an unexpected delight and a dishy, engrossing melodrama that blends familiar upstairs-downstairs tropes with witty, risqué turns and strong character work. She singles out the superb cast (especially Maggie Smith and Michelle Dockery) and the symbiotic portrayal of upstairs and downstairs worlds for particular praise while noting some nostalgic and occasionally farcical elements. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/downton-abbey-episodes-1-3-1798166929) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, Tim Goodman (80/100, inferred): The returning series is as great as ever, with a fantastic web of stories about love, class, and longing wrapped in nuanced dialogue, exquisite detail, and wonderful acting. A few soapier moments do not dilute the overall brilliance. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/review-downton-abbey-returns-as-279487/) - **The Times**, Andrew Billen (75/100, inferred): Julian Fellowes’s lavish series is no Brideshead Revisited but is ambitious in its own middle-brow way, with strong character backstories and a sumptuous setting that draws viewers in after the first half hour. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/tv-radio/article/weekend-tv-downton-abbey-rmttj3gzg) - **Radio Times**, Alison Graham (70/100, inferred): The review describes the first episode as slightly stodgy with talk of wills and entails but notes how audiences embraced the series worldwide. It highlights the setup of the Crawley family after the Titanic sinking and the arrival of Matthew Crawley. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/programme/b-cr9rax/downton-abbey-season-1/?episode=b-c0lf9s) - **The Independent**, Sarah Sands (70/100, inferred): The column praises Downton Abbey as the perfect middlebrow costume drama that captured audiences despite its flaws and anachronisms. It singles out the appeal of its stiff upper lip and downstairs action for older viewers. [Read](https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/sarah-sands/sarah-sands-downton-abbey-is-sloppy-tosh-that-s-why-we-love-it-2127299.html) - **The Guardian** (65/100, inferred): The critic notes that Downton Abbey arrives burdened with too much historical explanation and familiar period drama tropes. Maggie Smith stands out as splendid in the role of the imperious dowager countess. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2010/oct/03/downton-abbey-julian-fellowes-review) ## Details - **Created by:** Julian Fellowes - **Creator:** Julian Fellowes - **Director:** David Evans, Philip John, Catherine Morshead, Brian Percival, Brian Kelly, Minkie Spiro, Andy Goddard, Michael Engler, Ashley Pearce, Ben Bolt, James Strong, Edward Hall, Jeremy Webb - **Writer:** Julian Fellowes, Tina Pepler, Shelagh Stephenson - **Cinematography:** David Katznelson, David Marsh, Gavin Struthers - **Editor:** John Wilson, Nick McPhee, Alex Mackie, Steve Singleton - **Music:** John Lunn - **Producer:** Liz Trubridge, Chris Croucher, Rupert Ryle-Hodges - **Cast:** Maggie Smith as Violet Crawley; Michelle Dockery as Mary Crawley; Laura Carmichael as Edith Crawley; Joanne Froggatt as Anna Smith; Hugh Bonneville as Robert Crawley; Phyllis Logan as Mrs. Hughes; Jessica Brown Findlay as Sybil Crawley; Elizabeth McGovern as Cora Crawley - **Runtime:** 1h 06m - **Certificate (MPA):** TV-PG - **Release (the US):** 26 September 2010 - **Genres:** Drama ## Where to watch in the US - BritBox: streaming, hd - Peacock: streaming, hd - Amazon Prime Video: streaming - Amazon Prime Video: add-on - The Roku Channel: add-on, hd - Apple TV: add-on, hd - Apple TV: buy, sd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $11.99, sd *Checked 2026-09-17.* Also available in: AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HR, HU, IE, IS, IT, JP, LT, MX, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PE, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SI, SK, TR, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - SAG Awards 2014: Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series (won) ## If you liked this - *Upstairs, Downstairs* (1971), Fi1m 83: The Belgravia original, slower and shabbier, and kinder to the people below stairs. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/upstairs-downstairs.md) - *Gosford Park* (2001), Fi1m 85: Fellowes’s script for Altman, one weekend, one murder, and the servants get the last word. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/gosford-park.md) - *Brideshead Revisited* (1981), Fi1m 83: The country house as lost paradise, taken at a pace that would horrify Fellowes. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/brideshead-revisited.md) - *The Remains of the Day* (1993), Fi1m 88: Hopkins as a butler who chose the house over his life, and knows it. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-remains-of-the-day.md) - *The Leopard* (1963): Visconti’s Sicilian aristocrats watching their world end over one long, exhausting ball. --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/downton-abbey