Will Lady Mary and Henry Talbot live happily ever after?
Will Lady Mary and Henry Talbot live happily ever after?
Warning: This story contains spoilers ...
And so Downton Abbey ended, as many things do, in a graveyard.
There, poor Lady Edith beamed at the various children of clan Crawley as they danced around the tomb of poor Lady Sybil (Series 1-3, RIP). The string section struck up that mournful theme tune. The long credits rolled for one last time.
One last time, that is, until the curtain call of the last Christmas special.
But here it was, the last show of Downton proper, the biggest British television show and biggest period drama of the era.
As an episode, it was one which didn't really leave Lady Edith much to smile about. But it gave her the opportunity to say what she really thought.
"I know you to be a nasty, jealous, scheming bitch," she told Mary in an eruption that been building up for some time.
Mary had dropped the bombshell to Edith's hubby-to-be, Mr Pelham, that family ward Marigold was actually Edith's daughter. He - about to inherit a title from a killed-in-Tangiers marquess cousin, so suddenly a high-ranking toff - thought it best to call the whole thing off.
Tearing a strip off an unapologetic Mary was quite a display for poor old Edith, who, as a girl her father reminded her mother, "couldn't make her dolls do what she wanted".
Edith's explosion was a highlight of an affecting, funny extended episode which was a fine ending to six occasionally uneven and repetitive seasons that have taken committed fans through 13 years in the lives of the Crawley family, their servants, and the poor blokes who kept turning up to try to marry those aristocratic daughters.
Poor old Lady Edith. Sigh.
This farewell episode still had some curiously Downton things - melodramatic sub-plots that were neatly tidied away and forgotten before the end credits.
That included cook Mrs Patmore's new B&B being tarred as a "house of ill repute" because of an adulterous couple using it for a tryst. Word got around faster than a tripadvisor review. Even the local bobby, whose entire duties seem to be knocking on the back door of the Abbey to deliver yet more bad news, was wheeled in to tell Mrs Patmore the news.
But one Lord and Lady Grantham-led PR offensive later, Mrs Patmore's lodgings' reputation was restored. And hopefully she had enough time, between working through her entire repertoire of fretting sounds, to change the linen.
Then there was closeted servant Thomas Barrow, having been given his marching orders, attempting to do away with himself. But revived by his co-workers, he was propped up in bed, smiling and taking visitors not too long after. Though his momentarily deathly pallor reminded that an opportunity for a vampire-inspired Downton Abbey Halloween special had gone begging.
Not much else happened among the servants in this movie-length episode, other than meek Mr Molesley finding his metier as a teacher at the village school.
The most memorable performance from the hired help came from head butler Carson's disapproving eyebrows, which spent much of the time doing enough acting for the entire downstairs ensemble.
Elsewhere, though, this instalment rose above the usual period soap humdrum, with sharp scenes and performances.
One had Cousin Isobel in an encounter over the teacups with the scheming fiance of Lord Merton's son and recurring villain Larry Grey - he had disapproved of his father's relationship with Isobel, who called the whole thing off.
But fiance now realised marrying the old boy off got him a free nursemaid in his dotage.
A smiling, scathing Isobel said the change was a "volte-face".
The best volte-face of the show, though, was from the Dowager Countess. Maggie Smith's character and her barbed wit hardly figured in this episode. But her scene opposite a distraught Mary was the most poignant of the entire season.
"I believe in rules and tradition and playing our part," she admonished her granddaughter, "but there is something else."
"And what is that, pray?" asked Mary.
"I believe in love."
Gulp. Anyone who's laughed at Smith's delivery of Violet's sour-faced put-downs across the six seasons would have had a tear in their eye at that one. I did.
No wonder Mary came to her senses and married the charming, dashing but underfunded Henry Talbot, having spent the best part of the episode giving him the flick.
The sisters reconciled, less than convincingly, but enough to get them through to Christmas. The newlyweds trotted off from the church as poor old Edith kept an eye on the kids dancing in the cemetery.
It made for a pretty picture and a bittersweet ending to a fine finale.
The Downton Abbey cast dressed up for one last hurrah in the series finale.
