Downton Abbey

Sunday's episode of "Downton Abbey" on PBS featured a guest appearance by one of opera's biggest living talents: Dame Kiri Te Kanawa. The New Zealand-born soprano played Dame Nellie Melba, an actual opera singer who hailed from Australia and whose career spanned the late 19th and early 20th centuries. "Downton" portrays Melba as a guest performer of the Crawley household, serenading the family after dinner with the aria "O Mio Babbino, Caro" from Puccini's opera "Gianni Schicchi.

“Downton Abbey” continues to have sex on the brain. Change is the one constant on this series, and so far this season has been particularly focused on the loosening of interaction between the sexes in the Jazz Age. Two episodes back, just about everyone at Downton was feeling frisky. Now, with bodies ashiver over Rudolph Valentino in “The Sheik,” the Crawleys and their staff are beginning to understand the fallout from their frolicking. The most obvious example is Edith, who learns that she has “fallen pregnant,” as the Brits would put it. We all knew this was going to happen as soon as Rosamund warned her it might.

It's a shame Gloria Gaynor wasn't making records back in 1920, because if anyone needs to drink about seven or eight bottles of wine, throw "I Will Survive" on the Victrola and belt out those lyrics from the bottom of her heart using Lady Mary's hairbrush as a microphone, it's poor old Edith. The middle Crawley sister has had more than her fair share of hard knocks and humiliations over the years, from her short-lived fling with the farmer down the road to her aborted flirtation with a (likely)

"Downton Abbey" is a show that romanticizes an era before cellphones and televisions, but it turns out modern technology has been good to the costume drama. In news that would no doubt send Mrs. Patmore, Downton's Luddite cook, into a panic, PBS and WGBH announced Monday that the audience for the Season 4 premiere grew by 52% to an audience of 15.5 million, once DVR viewership over the following week was factored in. (And here she thought electric mixers were a force to be reckoned with!

I would bet you shillings to cents that at least 90% of the people who watch “Downton Abbey,” which returns to these TV shores on Sunday, would rather be the “upstairs” folk, the titled Crawley family, than the “downstairs” population of the maid- and menservants. Who would want to be obligated to all that groveling and scraping, right? As it turned out, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, tens of thousands of people did. PHOTOS: 'Downton Abbey' -- Behind the Scenes Hollywood Backlot For all the subservience, the hand-and-foot tending of people whose birth and wealth evidently made them ill-suited to dress themselves, a life in “service” to a great British family like the Crawleys could be far better than the alternatives.

Where is a dead Turkish diplomat when you need one? As we approach the midpoint of “Downton Abbey's” third season, I am increasingly concerned the show has lost its ability to surprise. I find myself nostalgic for the long-ago days when you never knew who might slip on an errant bar of soap, die from ingesting rat poison, or carry on a same-sex affair with closeted members of the nobility. What was so seductive about “Downton Abbey” the first time around was how it offered all the usual trappings of British costume drama, while also indulging the more prurient impulses of the contemporary viewer.

The third season of "Downton Abbey" premiered across the pond Sunday night, and the sky-high ratings suggest that fans haven't tired of the soapy period piece. Approximately 8.6 million viewers tuned into to ITV1, the network that airs "Downton Abbey" in Britain, to watch Shirley MacLaine make her first appearance as Martha Levinson, the wealthy American mother of Lady Cora (Elizabeth McGovern). Those numbers would be impressive stateside, but they're even more dazzling given the much smaller size of the British television audience.

The third season of "Downton Abbey" premiered across the pond Sunday night, and the sky-high ratings suggest that fans haven't tired of the soapy period piece. Approximately 8.6 million viewers tuned into to ITV1, the network that airs "Downton Abbey" in Britain, to watch Shirley MacLaine make her first appearance as Martha Levinson, the wealthy American mother of Lady Cora (Elizabeth McGovern). Those numbers would be impressive stateside, but they're even more dazzling given the much smaller size of the British television audience.

Oh, “Downton Abbey,” it's good to have you back. Fans - at least those with a healthy respect for copyright law -- have waited patiently since March for the return of the embattled Crawley family.  It's been a long hiatus, but on the bright side, this is not a show that wastes time getting into the action. True to form, Sunday's Season 3 premiere introduced close to  half a dozen new plot developments in less than the time it takes Mrs. Patmore to whip up one of her famed soufflés.

Editor's note: This interview was conducted in Britain last summer, before the fate of Stevens' character was known. Dan Stevens was a virtual unknown before "Downton Abbey" premiered on PBS two years ago. But between the launch of the series and the premiere of Season 3, a lot changed for Stevens; the Cambridge grad became a heartthrob across the globe in the role of Matthew Crawley, a middle-class lawyer sucked into the gilded cage that is...

Is Bates about to live up to his name and go "psycho"? That's the question we're left with at the end of Sunday's “Downton Abbey,” as the seemingly mild-mannered valet and wrongly convicted criminal, having learned about his wife's rape, warns Mrs. Hughes that “nothing's over and done with.” Given the ominous music swelling on the soundtrack, the indication seems to be that, yes, Bates is bent on revenge. On the one hand, it's hard to blame the guy for wanting a bit of justice.

Lady Mary Crawley of post-Edwardian Yorkshire slips into exquisite beaded gowns with the help of her trusted lady's maid, Anna. But Michelle Dockery, the 32-year-old actress who plays the eldest daughter on "Downton Abbey," seeks the assistance of a 21st century queen. "I was listening to Beyonce's new album nonstop this morning while getting ready," said the actress, sporting a structured black and white gown with a plunging neckline on the Screen Actors Guild Awards red carpet Saturday.

Homer, whose epic poems rank with King David's psalms among the longest-running items in heavy rotation on Western civilization's hit parade, keeps making news 2,600-plus years after his initial fame. First up is word that actor Dan Stevens recently has immersed himself in the ancient Greek bard since leaving "Downton Abbey" after his character, heir-to-the-manor Matthew Crawley, had a fatal car wreck in a 2013 episode of the PBS series. It was no tragedy for Stevens, who pretty much forced that plot turn by declaring he was leaving the show.

Sunday's episode of "Downton Abbey" on PBS featured a guest appearance by one of opera's biggest living talents: Dame Kiri Te Kanawa. The New Zealand-born soprano played Dame Nellie Melba, an actual opera singer who hailed from Australia and whose career spanned the late 19th and early 20th centuries. "Downton" portrays Melba as a guest performer of the Crawley household, serenading the family after dinner with the aria "O Mio Babbino, Caro" from Puccini's opera "Gianni Schicchi.

Well, that was awful. Sunday's “Downton Abbey” begins as a fun, frivolous return to form, as a party of visitors, including Lady Mary's new love interest, Lord Gillingham, descend on the estate for an sumptuous dinner. Everyone's in their most fabulous attire, Lord Grantham is once again imperiling the family fortune, Lady Mary's “back in the saddle” both metaphorically and literally, the household staff is in disarray, and all the stress is giving Mrs. Patmore a heart attack.

The Season 4 premiere of "Downton Abbey" has forced PBS to throw out its old record books. Sunday's episode of the costume drama set in 1920s Britain became the most-watched PBS drama premiere of all time, with a total audience of 10.2 million viewers, according to Nielsen. That was up 22% over the Season 3 premiere last year, itself a record for PBS, which typically sees ratings that are a fraction of those of other broadcast networks. Fan interest for the fourth season has been at a high since last season ended with the unexpected death of the popular "Downton" scion Matthew Crawley (Dan Stevens)

As an Anglophile, I'm as pathetic as the next chap. My idea of a good time is to be in London, drinking at lunch with some well-lubricated British journalist friends, stumbling out when it's getting dark, tea at a fancy hotel and then theater in the evening. Then repeat. And yes, when I'm not in London (that is, almost all the time), I rarely miss an episode of "Downton Abbey. " But at least I have the decency to be ashamed about it. The shameless popularity of this blue-blood soap opera, which starts its third season in the U.S. next month, is astonishing.

Another season of "Downton Abbey" has swiftly gone by, and those of us who are fans deserve a break. The tragic death of one character -- Lady Sybil -- was hard enough to take, but when the final episode concluded with the upright Matthew Crawley dying in a car wreck reminiscent of the opening scene in "Lawrence of Arabia," it was simply too much manipulation of our tender heartstrings. We need some time to grieve while the writers concoct new twists in a storyline that had tied up most of the loose ends at the close of Season 3. I confess I'll not miss Matthew all that much.

Don't let those somber new opening credits fool you: “Downton Abbey” is back and, despite a veneer of sadness hanging over the place, not much has changed. Indeed, there is so much familiar in Sunday's Season 4 premiere of “Downton Abbey” -- a conniving lady's maid, a patronizing, pompous Lord Grantham and yet another magical last-minute inheritance  -- that Cousin Matthew's absence is, dare I say it, not all that noticeable. (The lack of canine rear-end in the opening sequence, on the other hand, is egregious.)

When the Crawley clan of "Downton Abbey" returns to American television this weekend, I will take more than a sporting interest in the fate of the newly widowed Lady Mary. As someone who was widowed at a relatively young age myself, my fondest hope is this: that she will be no lady. Perhaps she can help the rest of us sort out what constitutes proper behavior for a woman whose husband has died. Being a widow is one of the few female roles for which social norms still lag in a bygone era, reinforced by literature and popular culture.