Dear friends,
If this were the 18th century, we’d call this an entr-acte, a burlesque to disrupt or end the evening with.
With a fugitive visit from Andrew Davies’s Mr Selfridge:
Cont’d:
Take the few minutes to watch. Much of the cast of Downton Abbey and the star of Mr Selfridge plus the inimitable Joanne Lumley (perfect timing herself) as our ghost of Christmas Hollywood. No serious pointing out of the inequities of Downton Abbey nor, like this Guardian article by Polly Toynbee, nore does it begin treat of the harm such shows acually perform, but it does highlight some of the most egregious absurdities of behavior and thought and feeling:
In the spirit of that Christmas ghost tale, It’s a Wonderful life, Lord Grantham has lost his whole fortune, and knowing it’s just all his fault, he is thinking of taking a spin in his car (we know what happens to characters who take spins on Christmas Eve), but then the Hollywood angel appears and shows him what the world would have been like had he never been born. The same counterfactual nonsense is applied.
For me the two best scenes are in Part One: the servants downstairs with Mrs Patmore dead drunk, Mrs Hughes beating everyone at cards and the tatooed undershirted Mr Molseley (I heart Baxter), Thomas upstairs stealing the crockery piece by piece. But in Part Two: Lady Mary’s bitchiness put to perfect account. There they resort to self-reflexive direct mockery: as Fellowes says few do care about the lack of real sense in the show but everyone scrutinizes the cutlery (literal historical accuracy of epitomizing details which is after all what historical fiction and films rely on). In one of the companion volumes, Fellowes gives away what a sex symbol Elizabeth McGovern is for him.
What better for New Year’s: a mini- mini-series. Let us with Mrs Patmore break out the brandy and look around for Clarence who let us hope by this time has gotten several more promotions.
Ellen
Reveries Under the Sign of Austen, Two 
John W: I watched, and was rewarded by Joanna Lumley and the rest of the DA cast spoofing it up. (A typical UK thing, these charity mini-episodes; Doctor Who has done several, most notably bringing back Peter Davison as the Doctor to meet his future self. They quarrel, of course. Come to think of it, Lumley appeared in one, as the Doctor.)
The DA spoof worked best for me when it went “downstairs”–they didn’t give Maggie Smith any good stinging lines, a criminal waste, although Mary backing Thomas’s contract claim was pretty good.
I think I would watch Joanna Lumley in just about anything….
P.S. There is a whole tradition of parodic and burlesque costume drama (Blackadder, anyone? Monty Python), which the US lacks. We are as a people not as accepting of ourselves. We would not be able to do it as lightly.