Season 1 Episode 1 of 13
What makes me say that it’s better than “Downton Abbey” ? (Although I did keep company with the Abbey throughout the entire ride)
Well, it was one of my childhood favorites, for starters.
It wasn’t a disappointment when I revisited it as an adult, as can often happen with childhood “favorites” revisited.
The characters are fuller, the dialogues are smarter and the actors are effortlessly on target-never mind easier to look at.
There aren’t any obvious stretches of mind numbing predictability. Or put more plainly, there’s very little “hand holding beepity-whoops”. Put even plainer yet, since Massa’s overseers have always tended to their charges in Britain with MILES more measures of respect, the audience is allowed to enjoy the translation of the art for themselves..without getting whacked in the neck with a five pound sack of propaganda triggers all throughout.
On a juvenile side note, I will also finish with one more point.
Since I have spent an entire lifetime seeking out and appreciating better productions than average American material..
(despite being a minority, a “Gen-X”-er and an American-born one on top of it all)
I take IMMENSE satisfaction in the fact that I didn’t need to be prodded, lured or led into the habit.
I make mention of this because of a snide comment some “Abbey” associated producer, of some such degree, made in an interview from a few years back re: her thinking that the show would have been wasted on an American audience. Obviously the better decision was made after all.
Knowing what we know of the purposeful soiling of all American Media, without regard nor respect for us as adult human beings, capable of more than idiot or gutter trash standards anyway…it warms the cockles of my own snide heart to share something , from so long ago, that can still outshine whatever modern and mediocre product enabled her to hoist herself up on that flea-bitten high horse which she obviously clomped into the room on.
Ramsy's Joint 