Downton Abbey, Christmas Special, review: 'He did it!' 

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Downton Abbey, Christmas Special, review: \'He did it!\'

This triumph of a festive special had no shortage of thrills, says Gerard O\'Donovan. CONTAINS SPOILERS

Heartwarming: Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) and her son George  Photo: Nick Briggs/Carnival Films

At last, he did it! Downton Abbey’s curmudgeonly butler Mr Carson (Jim Carter) gave us all an unexpected Yuletide boost by finally popping the question. The surprise marriage proposal to housekeeper Mrs Hughes (Phyllis Logan) was the enormous cherry on top of a Christmas special that was brimming with intrigue, warmth, sentiment and good cheer. And it brought closure not only to a delight-filled two hours of drama but to a romantic storyline that’s been up in the air for an entire twelvemonth since the pair took an affecting seaside paddle together at the end of last year’s festive special.

We should be grateful, really. A year is not so long by the standards of Downton’s creator Julian Fellowes. This is the man who, when it came to the show’s biggest love story – between Lord Grantham’s eldest, Lady Mary, and her ill-fated paramour Matthew Crawley – teased us with three seasons-worth of will-they-won’t-they before he eventually allowed them to come together.

Thankful, too, that Lord Fellowes is the kind of writer who simply couldn’t allow one of the series’ longest running and most affectionate friendships to stay buried under a weight of Remains of the Day-style propriety. Instead we got a tender, understated and heartfelt declaration; but only after we’d been rocked by Mrs Hughes announcement that she couldn’t, after all, go into the B&B business with Carson when they retired – thus forcing the lovable old stuffed-shirt’s hand.

It felt just right. Sending us off to fill our Yuletide hotwater bottles with a glow already emanating from the heart. The show hadn’t promised such triumph at the outset. When the Crawleys and their retinue decamped en masse from Downton to join the new in-laws Lord and Lady Sinderby, for a spot of heavily tweeded grouse shooting, the obvious question was how could any decent festive spirit be conjured up in August? But it gradually became clear that what we were getting was not one over-arching storyline, rather two episodes that had been on the cards already, glued together and sprinkled with glitter in the latter stages.

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The first hour was achingly scenic (set against the majestic backdrop of Alnwick Castle) and full of class-transgressing conspiracy. Admittedly the main storyline was hard to swallow, requiring as it did the morally punctilious Lord Sinderby – so recently pushed to volcanic outrage by a mere divorce – to acquire not only a mistress and a love child but to undergo a wholesale personality transplant as well. Still, none of that really mattered while Lord Grantham was having chest pains, his so-often lovelorn daughter Lady Edith was flirting with a land agent, and poor innocent ladies’ maid Anna’s chances of being sent to the gallows were increasing by the hour. Add a dashing new man (Matthew Goode) for Lady Mary to dress down, and there was no shortage of thrills to engage.

It was all forgotten anyway once the Crawleys returned home. Almost without noticing autumn morphed into December, the giant Christmas tree was up and we were being enveloped by warmth, baubles, and hefty dollops of tear-jerking sentiment. It wasn’t all love and kisses. Bates had nobly confessed to murder in order to gain Anna’s release, and gone on the run. Both Isobel (Penelope Wilton) and Lady Violet (Maggie Smith) were, separately, having to apply the candle-quencher to their romances. But overall it was a tinsel-fringed, carol-warbling romp all the way to Carson’s surprise proposal. And lest that was not enough, Bates turned up out of the blue again and made Anna the happiest, if understandably somewhat anxious, woman alive.

“We’ll worry about everything else later,” he reassured her manfully in the show’s closing lines. “But for now, let’s just have a very Happy Christmas.”

A sentiment that fitted the festive mood perfectly.

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