Downton Abbey

I don't like it. That's a bit unfair since I have seen only twenty minutes or so of it; but "Downton Abbey" I decided, after only 20 minutes, wasn't for me. I sort of disapproved of it but I couldn't find words to express why. It had to do with the snobbery, the Upstairs/Downstairs feel of it, the Them and Us thing, the complacency and superiority of the ones who were well off and the regard for them by their underlings. I just felt it was a world that had gone and good riddance to it.
Of course it hasn't gone. There's the monarchy and the aristocracy and the hangers-on and the Oxbridge set and their rag balls and the boat race and the blues rugger match....
I wrote a short play some time ago about the rector of Stiffkey who became famous, or more famously, infamous as a result of spending the greater part of his week in London, instead of Stiffkey, helping prostitutes find a way to reform their lives. He became known as The Rector of Stiffkey (also as The Prostitutes Rector) and his fame was kept alive for some time by the sensational press coverage. I thought a trip to Stiffkey would be interesting. And it was because I met the present occupier of the Rectory, now a Vicarage. He was a pleasant guy; he wanted to chat about the infamous rector and the people of his parish who would not wish to have to live again the pain of his defrocking. In the course of the conversation the vicar told me how he was in a local shop one day buying something or other and when he turned to leave who should he come face to face with but Julian Fellowes. He mentioned this in a way that I knew he found exciting, as if he had met someone in the royal family or, maybe, a high-up in the church. I felt there was something about his telling me a certain boastfulness: he had met and spoken to Julian Fellowes.
In The Daily Mail recently A. N. Wilson wrote a scathing piece on Julian Fellowes and in the course of his article summed up what I could not myself put my finger on as regards Downton Abbey. He wrote: "Downton Abbey glorifies an ordering of society that was hateful in reality. While the real-life aristocracy of Edwardian England lived in grandeur and expected other people to wait on them and attend to all their needs, the great majority of British people lived without sanitation, education or comfort."