Behind the Scenes at Downton Abbey (32 page)

There’s something particularly funny about things going wrong in front of a camera, leaving the cast unable to keep a straight face. ‘Oh, it happens endlessly,’ says Penelope Wilton. ‘You try not to, but when things go wrong, it always makes you laugh.’

The below-stairs cast in particular have had to learn to dash about with loaded trays – and not always with total success. ‘Once I had to walk into a scene for background and I dropped my tray. Piccalilli went over everything,’ remembers Sophie McShera.

She is not alone. ‘On my first week I was carrying a tray full of silver and china,’ says Ed Speleers. ‘I was striding down the servants’ hall and slipped. The whole tray went everywhere.’

Some comic moments are more intentional, he adds. ‘There was a sombre moment in a scene when one of the characters gets up and storms out. Rob [James-Collier] thought it would be hilarious in rehearsal to throw himself onto the floor. He’s the on-set joker, but he knows when to focus, too.’

They say never work with children or animals, but as the lives of the characters change from one series to another, increasingly the actors must do both.

Isis, Robert’s faithful yellow Labrador, is played by an easy-going seven-year-old called Abbie in series four. Brought in by handlers used to working on films, she is trained to follow actors, although she does need rehearsals – and dog treats – to perform at her best.

She has a particular fan in Allen Leech (Branson), who has to be reminded not to give her too much attention, otherwise the audience would see Robert’s dog always trotting after his son-in-law.

The roles of Sybil’s daughter, Sybbie, named after her mother, and Mary’s son George are currently filled by three children: a little girl called Ava Mann plays Sybbie in the fourth series, while identical twins Logan and Cole Weston play her younger cousin. Casting twin babies is common, as it means reducing the time each individual child has to be present for filming.

Concessions have to be made because of the age of the actors, though. Jim Carter says he might have played Mr Carson as being more at a loss when handling a crying Sybbie in the third series, but wisely he tempered his reaction. ‘Carson’s a crusty old bachelor, but he would probably have a grandfatherly interest in the kids,’ he says. ‘I would have liked to have been able to treat the baby like an alien, but that would have freaked her out, so I had to be very affectionate!’

Downton Abbey
’s success was not a slow burner once it hit the television screens. The initial overnight audience figure came in at 7.6 million for its Sunday-night debut on ITV in September 2010.

‘I was in a meeting about another project, just getting on with my Monday-morning work, and somebody came in with the ratings on a piece of paper, saying – “It’s huge,”’ remembers Gareth Neame, executive producer. ‘That was a really good figure, and it was higher than we were expecting, so we were delighted.’

The big surprise was yet to come. The following Monday, Neame flew to Cannes for the industry event Mipcon, to sell the show overseas, and as he stepped off the plane he immediately got a call from Laura Mackie, then head of drama at ITV. ‘She said, “Have you seen the ratings? They are extraordinary.”’

The overnight number for the show’s second episode had come in even bigger still, he learned, at 8.3 million. ‘It was pretty much unheard of in my experience. With most shows, you start high, then have a dip by the second week as a certain number of viewers will not come back. I had never seen a show go up so substantially between weeks one and two.’ In fact, the consolidated ratings (which include viewing figures for audiences watching the show both live and on playback) were a staggering 9.2 million for episode one and 10 million for episode two, confirming
Downton Abbey
as an immediate hit.

By coincidence, Julian Fellowes was on the same flight, heading to Cannes for meetings about another show, Neame remembers. ‘I walked off the plane and I stood on the runway, waiting for Julian; I was so excited. He was one of the last people to come off the plane, and I said, “I’ve just got the ratings – it’s a huge hit!”’

The critics, meanwhile, were as warm in their support as the audience.
Downton
holds a Guinness World Record for the highest critical review ratings for a TV show, after its first series scored 92 out of 100 on Metacritic (a site that aggregates reviews), making it the highest-scoring reviewer-rated show ever.

Amid the buzz, the show began to percolate in the public’s consciousness very quickly. The Saturday before the second episode aired in the UK, Neame heard a guest on Radio 4 add the caveat of ‘I don’t mean that in a
Downton Abbey
kind of way.’ ‘One episode had played and somebody was using it as a touchstone for something completely unrelated,’ he remarks.

The cast, as the faces of the show, were beginning to sense success in a more direct way. Lesley Nicol (Mrs Patmore) noticed that when her fellow dog-walkers greeted her they were rather ‘more bubbly and giggly’ than usual. The wake-up moment for Phyllis Logan (Mrs Hughes), meanwhile, came when a London radio DJ started a men’s fan club for the show, dubbed ‘Manton Abbey’. ‘When all these rufty-tufty booted men were joining, I thought, “Oh, this is bizarre!” I am surprised it appeals to men, because I would see it more as a woman’s sort of thing, really. But it seems to have touched all manner of people.’

And then the Granthams went global. After its UK debut the show began to air around the world, notably in January 2011 when it had its US premiere on PBS, the non-profit public broadcasting television network.
Downton Abbey
was starting to generate a buzz overseas.

Later the same year, the second series aired in the UK to even bigger numbers, helped by word of mouth and, specifically, the ‘will they, won’t they?’ speculation around Mary and Matthew’s relationship.

There was some inevitable backlash to the show’s success, Neame remembers. ‘People were saying, “It’s moving too quickly through history, the episodes are too fast-paced, we can’t keep up with them.”’ Yet it was clear to him that these very elements were thrilling others. ‘By the second series, critics and viewers were more conscious of the kind of drama we are making, which is a contemporary family relationship saga,’ he says. ‘Those who complained about it being fast-paced were the traditional parts of the audience. But the fact that it
was
fast-paced was why we were getting kids in America watching the show.’

And they continue to watch.
Downton
became and continues to be PBS’s highest-rating drama in its more than 40-year history. The shocking series-three finale pulled in more than 12 million viewers, beating all its prime-time rivals in that one night.

Of course, it is not just the kids who are watching the show in the US. When Hillary Clinton stepped down as US Secretary of State, the cast made a tape for her, remembers Neame. ‘When it was played at her celebration dinner, Bill Clinton turned to the British Ambassador and said, “This really is her favourite show.”’

For Elizabeth McGovern (Cora),
Downton
’s State-side success has been particularly sweet. ‘It was nice for me to go back home with a sense of pride in being part of the show; I felt I could hold my head up high – just like all the other members of the cast.’

She has her own thoughts on why her home country has so embraced the series. ‘When I see what’s on TV in America, I’m struck by how deeply cynical it is,’ she says. ‘Maybe Americans are relieved to watch a show in which there’s a basic decency to most of the people – not that everybody on the show is perfect. They seem to find that refreshing, along with the fact that it is a very nice escape and very pretty to look at.’

Of course, America is only part of the story.
Downton
now airs in 200-plus territories, so the Crawleys and their servants are familiar to an estimated 120 million people around the world.

Jim Carter (Mr Carson) experienced his own ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?’ moment on a cycling holiday. ‘I was in my Lycra gear, sweating like a horse, walking through temples in the Cambodian jungle,’ he remembers. He was far from the world of the Abbey, but when spotted by a group of Chinese tourists, he heard a familiar cry: ‘Oh, Mr Carson!’

It is an experience likely to be repeated many times over, as networks around the world transmit the show to enthusiastic viewers. Their reasoning for taking on the show varied. In Germany, executives at public broadcaster ZDF believed
Downton
would be embraced by an audience known to love stories about the aristocracy. At Spain’s Antena 3, management looked to the long tradition of British dramas finding favour there, particularly
Upstairs, Downstairs
. Brazil’s Globosat, meanwhile, having seen the show’s success with its UK and US audiences, took the gamble of airing the series in a slot normally kept for contemporary drama – it paid off.
Downton
is a hit around the world – and the show’s reach is still growing. Indeed, a recent deal with CCTV in China means it will be dubbed into Mandarin for a potential audience of 100 million.

So why does the show translate so easily into other countries and other cultures? Neame has his own theory on how the Abbey’s inhabitants are viewed. ‘It sounds absurd in a way when I say it, but I think audiences around the world look at that group of people as an extension of their family,’ he says. ‘That’s the soap-opera element. It happened with
Dallas
. I just hope that we bring something literary to the screen that has a beautiful production value. Essentially the dramatic and narrative tricks are very similar, though.’

Downton
’s international momentum has been helped by its award successes, thinks Neame. While the first series performed well in the US, it still represented a small slice of America’s vast, saturated TV market. Then came the 2011 Emmys. ‘We sent screeners of the show out to all the Academy members – and there are many thousands of them. It was the only way to make sure that people voting had seen the show,’ he says. ‘The awards drive the business, because the more people are made familiar with the show, the more people will watch it.’

The mass mail-out worked. The show picked up six Emmy Awards, prompting reports of ‘
Downton
sweeps the board’ back home. ‘The show just came out of nowhere from England and all of a sudden was on this world stage, competing with the top shows in the US,’ says Joanne Froggatt (Anna). ‘That was very exciting. The American side has been the happy surprise for a lot of us. They are used to doing productions with very high budgets and production values. It’s great that something from the UK has been able to compete.’

But
Downton
’s critical success did not end there. Today, with a total of 27 Emmy nominations, it is the most nominated non-American show in Emmy history, and has added two Golden Globes to its awards cabinet.