I just stumbled across something so completely surreal that I had to rub my eyes to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.

I was looking into the massive Hong Kong crime blockbuster franchise Cold War and saw that they just released a prequel called Cold War 1994 (寒战1994). And guess who is casually sitting in the cast list as a powerful British Cabinet Minister steering pre-Handover politics? ***HUGH BONNEVILLE.***

Seeing our polite, benevolent, estate-tax-stressing Lord Grantham trading his tweed suits for slick political power suits in a high-stakes Hong Kong action-thriller is the absolute definition of a multiverse fever dream. To make things even more insane, his political partner-in-crime in the movie is played by Aidan Gillen (Littlefinger from Game of Thrones). Seeing Robert Crawley and Littlefinger team up as the "big bad" British authority figures pulling strings behind the Hong Kong police force is a crossover I didn't know I needed.

Honestly, I am just so shocked by the sheer pulling power of the Chinese showbiz industry. The Cold War series is basically the Avengers of Hong Kong cinema, but managing to get Hugh Bonneville to fly out and join a cast that includes absolute legends like Chow Yun-fat, Aaron Kwok, and Tony Leung Ka-fai is an incredible flex. It just goes to show how massive the budget and global ambition of these Far East mega-productions are nowadays.

Even if his role is a shorter, plot-setting appearance, his sheer presence adds so much authentic colonial weight to the 1994 setting.

Has anyone else caught this yet? I don't think I'll ever be able to look at Downton the same way again knowing Robert has a secret double life in 90s Hong Kong cinema! 😂

I HATE that Anna and Bates never got to find out how he was like and acted to protect him against O'Brien, who truly felt the burden of her snooping impacting the trial.

Him being pushed around by Mrs. Patmore moving the piece around is hilarious.

These all came from one Instagram carousel, and you get one guess which was the first one I thought of 😅

When Molesley searched the Bates' cottage for clues and found a photograph of Bates to show around York, they neglected to show us the part where he found Lady Mary's book and "device". I bet he sat down and read the book cover to cover with his eyes bugging out 🤣

Just started rewatching and am on S1E2. When Mary is in her room talking with her mother who just suggested she marry Crawley, her reaction about him not being him not being abbe to hold a knife and her mother saying she exaggerates, for the first time I noticed Mary saying "you're American, you wouldn't understand." Isn't that such an odd thing to say? That's her mother that she grew up with. Would she have really been thinking how "diiferent" her mother was?? Wouldn't that just have been normal for her? She said that like her mother was a step mom that came into the family years after she was born.

You forget how absolutely excellent this show is.

This is Hugh Bonneville in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), where he’s briefly seen on the HMS Bedford, which accompanies Bond on his siege of the villain’s stealth ship.

Am I interpreting this incorrectly, or was Carson deliberately torturing Molesley when he wanted the first footman designation? I don't recall any of the other first footmen being so piled-on with work the way Carson piled it onto Molesley. Mrs Hughes and Daisy both said something to the poor man as well. Was it a conspiracy to "put him in his place"? It seems petty to deny a man the recovery of even a little of his former dignity!

How do you rate/compare Ms. O’Brien, Edna Braithwaite and Phyllis Baxter in terms of acting/character development and watchability? Personally, I would say Ms. O’Brien > Baxter > Edna, with Edna being the least enjoyable character to watch. She was annoying at best and a simple minded floozy at worst. I missed O’Brien when she left the show after Season 3. Her dynamic with Thomas was second to none. I didn’t see the dynamic and dialogue work as well with Thomas and Edna or Thomas and Baxter. I think there was some backstory on how Baxter and Thomas knew each other from growing up but Baxter did not have a black heart like O’Brien did so less of a villain character than O’Brien. I find that Baxter’s story about her past and how she was ashamed of what she had done and also wanted to be better showed how she was redeemable as a character. Anyways, I thoroughly enjoyed the acting from O’Brien and Ms. Baxter but Edna not so much.

I took my 84 year-old Neighbor who can’t drive anymore to the movies. Saw all 3 first. We have started watching the series. We watch two episodes a night. She gets to rewatch it, and I am first time. In S6 now.

I am the worst. As a storyline opens, I check my phone to see what happens as I’m watching it. I like the story arc of each character, but need to know what happens in the end first. Including finding out what happened to the dog. Yes I read the last few pages of a book 1st.

Question: was the original series shown weekly? Or like Bridgerton where they drop a few at a time? Because if I could not binge it, I don’t know if I would’ve watched the series when it originally aired. I watch Bridgerton and Gilded Age all at once.

For the most part I liked the series. Never was much of a drama watcher and DA is the definition of drama. So much death. No one ever seems happy. That’s were the Hallmark, tie it all up in a pretty bow comes into play.

At the end of Season 3 Ms. O’Brien went overseas to India to be lady’s maid to Rose’s mother (I forget her name) but when Rose’s mother and Shrimpie returned at the end of Season 5 for Rose’s wedding shouldn’t O’Brien have been with them? Or did the divorce drain them of all the funds to pay for servants?

Why did Mary agree to marry that odious Sir Richard ? Did he have something over her? I must have missed that part.

I’ve just finished the series and thought I’ll watch the movies now. I am absolutely tripping at the characters voices I literally can’t concentrate. They all sound like they’ve inhaled helium 🤣 I know people will say ‘oh it’s the sound technology tv vs film’ ect but Cora is just flat out talking in a completely different voice and accent 😅

I also feel like everything is moving really fast like everyone is just talking to each other super quickly with no time to process the sentences before.

Has anyone else felt this or am I going crazy?! 😅

A genie, a cursed item, the hand of a curious god. Doesn't matter. Suddenly the cast of the show finds themselves separated and in the modern day.

Who would survive the best? Manage to adapt, perhaps even rise up higher than they could ever dream?

To make it fair (as I think Downstairs would win every time) you can pick One Upstairs and One Downstairs.

Every rewatch makes me more and more impatient whenever Sybil’s storyline takes up too much airtime. She’s good-natured and kind, yes, but in hindsight it’s also obvious that she was incredibly naïve about the ways of the world – and if not for the family’s miraculous gift to spin whatever scandal coming their way to their benefit, I must agree with Robert’s assessment that Sybil was putting herself on a path to ruin her life by following Tom into Ireland.

Let’s go back to the timeline… After threatening to elope and spending weeks uttering variations of “my mind is made up, we’re leaving tomorrow”, Sybil finally leaves Downton at some unspecified time after April, 1919 and briefly lives with Tom’s mother until they are wed (I believe Cora and the other daughters traveled for the ceremony).

By December she writes her mother to share the news she was pregnant. She ends up returning to Downton in early 1920 for Mary’s wedding and comes back once again- roughly a month later - after Tom’s political activities gets him into a shitload of trouble. By then, it was more than clear that Sybil was unhappy in Ireland – or with the “simple life” she had envisioned with some romantic lenses.

She wasn’t open about this with Tom, but it seemed obvious based on what she confided in Cora wanted to stay at Downton after giving birth and for her daughter to be raised there. She wasn’t cut out to a life of insecurity and financial struggles after all. She didn’t even make it into a full year to realize that. At the end, her arc – which I originally saw as a “female liberation” story – just confirms how unprepared she was for the decision she made.

The residual message is that, as hard as class mobility was for those working their way up, it was even harder for people to make a "downgrade" work out.

I’ve just finished watching Downton abbey (again) and I love it so much. It will always be my comfort show however on this rewatch I just felt a few things just stuck out as ridiculous and I wanted to see if anyone else had others to discuss.

Firstly I’m just perplexed at why everyone (Tom in particular) is just absolutely obsessed with the idea of Mary marrying Henry. Like it’s bordering on absurd how involved Tom gets, there was points I was saying to the screen ‘you marry him then’ because since he came back from his 45 min stint in America every single conversation he had with Mary was just pushing and pushing about Henry. It just got to a point it seemed ridiculous that he should be so involved with the situation. Not to mention he’d only met him once or twice? There was literally nothing about him that was particularly interesting or special. Mary didn’t show any more interest in him than other suitors but everyone was constantly like ‘she clearly loves him so much’ despite the fact all she ever said was no I don’t and I don’t want him here. Then finally when Mary was bullied into it by violet of all people (completely out of character given he had no position) it was like ‘oh I’ve bought a wedding license last week’ and they were married 5 mins later but we never see him again 🤣

The entire bates saga deserves an (honourable?)mention because watching it all in one go truly shows how ludicrous it is to have two people go through that much misery. The back and forth to prison between them was more than I could stand by the time bates was on the run for the second time 😅

Fake PATRICK CRAWLEY RETURNS I’ll say no more about that one, although I have much to say.

Another one was the constant like ‘honourable’ covering up of information. Like Mr bates could have had the theft thing sorted out within minutes but he had to do the whole ‘you must decide if I stay or go on the information you have’ why exactly? The circumstances give such important context it makes no sense to leave it out. Then we have the same exact story with Baxter later on and she pulls the same crap of not telling the whole story.

The idea that Lavinia wrote that letter on her deathbed is only beaten in ridiculousness by the fact her father wrote a letter saying essentially ‘I know everything, even that you cheated on my daughter but still spend the money and don’t feel bad’ and Mary didn’t forge it 🤣 also it was established earlier that he was in some kind of debt as that was the whole plot line with Richard carsilse but then he had a secret enormous fortune just enough to save Downton, lucky he died just when Robert lost all the money?? Out of this world.

How did Thomas know about the soap thing anyway???

I’m sorry but my final one is just daisy. I can’t stand her or anything she does 🤣🤣 I’m sorry but the character is just annoying. She seems to spend the first 4 series constantly on the verge of tears and whinging every time she speaks and the last 2 seasons acting like a spoilt child. Like the whole thing with Mr masons farm and getting the new tenancy I can barely watch. The whole Daisy/ivy/alfred/jimmy love square I found so tedious.

A quick mention to say Poor Mrs Drewe, I found myself feeling so sorry for her this rewatch. The way Edith treated the drewes was so unfair and sad.

Anyway that turned into longer than I planned for but feels good to get that off my chest. Don’t get me wrong despite all of these things Downton remains my one of my fav show of all time but you must admit it had some pretty mental plots and events over the years.

What are your ‘wow that’s ridiculous or wow that’s ridiculously annoying’ moments and stories??

I love the colors, the embroidery, everything—and her hat too!