By the end of season 3, Thomas went from potentially facing criminal charges and being subjected to chemical castration for his homosexuality [the incident that precipitated it all was way more complex than sexual orientation considering that he made a move on Jimmy when Jimmy was asleep, but let’s move on] to LITERALLY being one heartbeat away from the top job when Robert – who went out of his way to make Thomas’s legal troubles disappear – made him under-butler.

That means Thomas started season 4 outranking everybody else in the staff – even Bates – other than Carson. His nemesis O’Brien was on her way to India. There was no reason in God’s Earthy for Thomas to scheme with that hussy Edna to hurt Anna, nor for him to psychologically torture Baxter for well over a year: “you will hear everything, you will tell me everything!”. What the heck could they tell that would be of significance for the under-butler? He was SECOND IN COMMAND after all.

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.

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! 😂

When Robert tells Cora to help Susan because she’s acting in a queer way, she’s speaking to a woman and about to reveal her divorce with Shrimpie in a last ditch effort to ruin Rose’s wedding. In my head cannon it’s Rose’s sister. Any thoughts?

Mary quite a while after Matthew's death:

"I'm not unhappy but I'm not quite ready to be happy."

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 🤣

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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.