{"id":136234,"date":"2025-09-11T22:23:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T22:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/136234\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T22:23:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T22:23:09","slug":"from-lethal-sex-to-gore-soaked-dinners-downton-abbeys-best-and-worst-bits-downton-abbey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/136234\/","title":{"rendered":"From lethal sex to gore-soaked dinners: Downton Abbey\u2019s best and worst bits | Downton Abbey"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prepare for stiff upper lips to wobble. Clutch monogrammed hankies for period-appropriate eye-dabbing. After 15 years on our screens, the Downton Abbey saga is about to hop in its vintage Rolls and drive off into the soft-focus sunset. The third and final film spin-off, Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale<\/a>, is released this Friday, accompanied by a forelock-tugging farewell ITV documentary.<\/p>\n

For six series, Downton bestrode the Sunday night schedules like a Grade II-listed colossus. Writer Julian Fellowes\u2019s upstairs-downstairs creation followed entitled aristos and their salt-of-the-earth servants at a fictional country pile. Sure, the dialogue was clumsy, the plots soapy and the historical exposition clunked like a stately home\u2019s antique radiators. Yet somehow, it didn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n

Downton was watched by an estimated 120 million people worldwide. It won three Golden Globes, four Baftas and a whopping 15 Emmys, becoming one of British TV\u2019s most successful exports of all time. Film sequels soon swept into cinemas, knocking over popcorn buckets with their bustles and grossing almost $300m (\u00a3222m) at the global box office.<\/p>\n

Now, like the crumbling dream of aristocratic England it portrayed, it\u2019s coming to an end. But what were the haw-hawing highlights? And what were the tweed-clad low points? Come with us as we ask our underpaid but grateful butler to pass the best claret and press rewind \u2026<\/p>\n

The five best<\/p>\n

Matthew Crawley\u2019s smashing Christmas<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Across three series of sherry-sipping, pearl-clutching and low-stakes plotting, Downton had established itself as one of the cosiest treats on TV. So it came as a sucker punch at Christmas 2012 when Fellowes made the nation choke on its Quality Street. Mere hours after wife, Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery), had given birth to a son and heir, Matthew and his floppy fringe were devastatingly killed off in a car crash. As his vintage motor lay upside down in a ditch, the camera festively lingered on his lifeless eyes and pooling blood. Roll credits. Actor Dan Stevens went on to big things in Hollywood, but the Scrooge-like plot twist became known as \u201cHow Downton Ruined Christmas\u201d.<\/p>\n

Everything the Dowager Countess ever said<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t be defeatist, dear, it\u2019s very middle class.\u201d Downton\u2019s defining character was tart-tongued diva Violet Crawley, brought to owl-like life by the late Maggie Smith<\/a>. Her innocent inquiry of \u201cWhat is a weekend?\u201d will go down in toff TV history. The pampered posho\u2019s haughty face-pulling and delicious line delivery were a weekly highlight. Her pince-nez would pop off at a cutlery-based crime. Her nostrils flared in horror at some ghastly commoner\u2019s etiquette error. Even her last words were positively Wildean, telling a blubbing lady\u2019s maid at her bedside: \u201cStop that noise, I can\u2019t hear myself die.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lady Mary\u2019s Turkish delight<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

You\u2019d think actor Theo James \u2013 him of White Lotus douchebag pedigree \u2013 could handle himself in a sex scene, but 15 years ago, the virgin Mary quite literally shagged him to death. James popped up in series one as Turkish diplomat Kemal Pamuk, who stopped off at Downton after a peace conference. During a scandalous night of passion with the Earl of Grantham\u2019s eldest daughter, Pamuk dropped dead from a heart attack. A spot of nocturnal corpse removal helped hush it up. Fellowes has admitted that the plotline was pilfered from real life. \u201cThat was completely true,\u201d he said. \u201cA guest had smuggled in a man who then had a heart attack. They carried this dead body the length of one of England\u2019s great houses, got him into his right bed and the story never got out.\u201d What a way to go. Downton legend has it that the ghost of Mr Pamuk still haunts the back passage.<\/p>\n

Romance below stairs
Those toffs upstairs are all very well, but it\u2019s the plucky plebs who provided the show\u2019s heart and soul. Downton devotees grinned ear to ear when romance blossomed between honourable valet Mr Bates (Brendan Coyle) and loyal lady\u2019s maid Anna (Joanne Froggatt). The couple had all manner of black-clad misery heaped upon them \u2013 murder trials, rapes, miscarriages, gratuitous limps \u2013 but lower-class love conquered all. Their cockle-warming arc was surpassed only by the Remains of the Day-style slow-burn courtship between butler Carson (Jim Carter) and housekeeper Mrs Hughes (Phyllis Logan). This was further improved by a comical prenuptial subplot where Mrs Hughes roped in cook Mrs Patmore (Lesley Nicol) to find out if Carson expected their union to be consummated. Cue a barrage of ye olde euphemisms: \u201cHave you fully considered every aspect of marriage? Will she be expected to perform all wifely duties? Do you wish her to share your, er, way of life?\u201d Carson\u2019s eyebrows raised so far they hovered near the chandeliers.<\/p>\n

Brendan Coyle and Joanne Froggatt film a romantic encounter as John Bates and Anna Smith. Photograph: Photograph Nick Briggs. +44(0)20\/film company handout<\/p>\n

When Sybil made us snivel
When he wrote the script where the youngest Crawley sister died in childbirth, Fellowes confessed that he was \u201cabsolutely streaming with tears\u2019\u2019. You and us both, babes. Having boldly crossed the class divide to marry Irish chauffeur Tom \u201cno relation to Richard\u201d Branson (Allen Leech), husky-voiced, gold-hearted Lady Sybil (Jessica Brown Findlay) gave birth to a baby girl. However, her bumptious father and his fancy London doctor ignored the warnings of village physician Dr Clarkson, refusing to take her to hospital. Sybil promptly died from the complications of pre-eclampsia. Her heartbroken husband named their daughter Sybbie in tribute. Stop it, you\u2019ll set me off again.<\/p>\n

The five worst<\/p>\n

Walk, don\u2019t walk<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Shot in the spine and sent home wounded from the first world war, that nice Matthew Crawley was told that he\u2019d be paralysed for life from the waist down and unable to father children. Gasp! What did this mean for dear old Downton\u2019s uncertain future? Fear not, ye of little faith. It was a mere two episodes before Matthew miraculously regained feeling in his legs and instinctively leapt from his wheelchair to help Lavinia Swire (Zoe Boyle) when she tripped over and dropped a tea tray, gallantly catching her as she fell. They should turn it into a NHS treatment.<\/p>\n

That dog\u2019s derriere on the opening titles
Poor Isis the labrador<\/a>. Not only did her name become deeply awkward during the rise of the Islamic State terrorist organisation. She was also subjected to the doggy indignity of a lingering shot of her backside on the opening credits. As the Earl of Grantham strode across the rolling grounds towards his stately home, his hound trotted alongside, bum oscillating in and out of view as her tail wagged. Isis was eventually killed off and replaced by an Andrex puppy called Teo, but out of respect, her fluffy derriere remained on the credits. It\u2019s what she would have wanted.<\/p>\n

Spratt\u2019s entertainment
Lady Edith\u2019s main function was to be unlucky in love and live in the flapper girl-shaped shadow of elder sister Mary. By series five, however, she\u2019d become a career woman. Kind of. As Edith edited a new-fangled magazine in \u201cthat\u201d London, society was abuzz with speculation about the identity of its anonymous agony aunt Cassandra \u2013 a sort of proto-Lady Whistledown from Bridgerton. Who lay behind this mysterious nom de plume? In a camply implausible development, step forward the Dowager Countess\u2019s bumbling butler Septimus Spratt (Jeremy Swift) \u2013 a sort of male Mrs Overall with a face like a wet weekend in Whitby. Who else? It\u2019s a wonder Spratt found time for moonlighting, what with his interminable feud with lippy lady\u2019s maid Mrs Denker (Sue Johnston).<\/p>\n

O\u2019Brien gets her ladyship in a lather<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Along with scheming footman Thomas Barrow, evil lady\u2019s maid Miss O\u2019Brien (Siobhan Finneran) was the hiss-boo panto villain of the early series. Her most dastardly trick was the literal stuff of soap opera. Under the misapprehension that she was about to be sacked, O\u2019Brien slyly planted a wet bar of carbolic soap on the floor beside her mistress\u2019s bath. Pregnant Cora Crawley (Elizabeth McGovern) slipped on it and miscarried. O\u2019Brien, in her defence, did appear full of remorse for a scene or two, before normal devious service was resumed. Sadly, it\u2019s also the last mildly interesting storyline that Cora got.<\/p>\n

Spew Bonneville<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Dinnertime gore-fests are more traditionally associated with Game of Thrones. But anything Westeros can do, the landed gentry can do more ludicrously. There had been clumsy foreshadowing of Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) having stomach problems, with the peaky patriarch grumbling about \u201ca bit of indigestion\u201d. Nobody expected a scene worthy of The Exorcist. During a dinner for visiting health minister (and future PM) Neville Chamberlain, the Earl\u2019s ulcer burst and he projectile-vomited blood all over the dinner table and assembled guests. While the Earl was carted off for emergency surgery, diners daintily wiped scarlet spatter off their pearls and tiaras, before sending for another pot of Mrs Patmore\u2019s coffee. Has Vanish stain remover been invented yet, my lordship?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prepare for stiff upper lips to wobble. Clutch monogrammed hankies for period-appropriate eye-dabbing. After 15 years on our…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,427],"class_list":{"0":"post-136234","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}