SLA updates!

If you have not started watching Downton Abbey on PBS, you need to go get on that. I'll wait. The first episode from last Sunday is right there on the website, have at it.



Done? Good.

First off, this is not technically a S(umptuous) L(iterary) A(daptation) because it's an original screenplay, not one adapted from a book. Only you can't even tell, and I would totally read this book.

The basic set-up is this:

The Crawley family (made up of Lord Crawley, his American (gasp!) wife, and their three daughters) lives in Downton Abbey. Also living there are all the servants. Living down the road is snobby grandmother Maggie Smith, which, awesome. (She gets to says things like, "What's a weekend?")


Not awesome is the part where the Titanic just sank and took with it Lord Crawley's 1st cousin and the man's son. They were next in line for the estate, and now they need to figure out who the next nearest male relative is. The title and estate is entailed, (remember your Sense & Sensibility, friends?) which means that not only can it not go to Lord and Lady Crawley's daughters (sexist) but that the massive American dowry Lady Crawley brought across the pond with her will also be going to some distantly-related stranger. Nice one, England. Anyway, that's the basic premise, plus a ton of above-stairs and below-stairs intrigue, gossip, flirting, manipulations, and awesomeness.



This is a great one to watch if you love to play that classic game, "Shriek the Name of That British Actor and the Names of the Other Films or Plays in Which You Have Seen Them." It'll keep you busy. You can also do what my sister Jenny and I do, which is to only refer to the characters by the names of the other characters you have seen them play. This why the new valet with the bad leg is called Nicholas Higgins (North and South, yay Nicholas!), why the new heir, a middle-class lawyer from Manchester, is Edward Ferrars (Sense & Sensibility, with me yelling for him to stop inadvertently hurting the servants' feelings with his modern ways but instead to go find some wood to chop in the rain already), and why the smarmy money-grubbing suitor from London is called simply Stardust (also, jerk-wad).

It's fun, too, to shout out predictions ("Secretly gay! Secretly gay!") and threats ("Ooooooh, ladies maid! Someone needs to cut you in the FACE!"). Maybe you could create your own drinking game. Or, in my case, brie-eating game.

And you will want to do all these things because this movie sucks you right in. It is so, so good. And there are still three episodes to go!

Posted in: Sumptuous Literary Adaptations