Since Prince Edward left the television industry, Julian Fellowes, a lord married to one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting, is the closest British TV has to royalty. And so it's fitting that, within the space of only two years, a special edition of Downton Abbey has become as much a fixture of the Christmas Day schedules as Her Majesty's speech.
But, unlike the monarch, Fellowes is under no requirement to avoid controversy. Though set at the turn of 1920, Sunday's two-hour episode often seemed to be commenting on issues that have obsessed the media during 2011. Hugh Bonneville's Earl of Grantham kept expressing gratitude and amazement that his family's scandals had not been reported. "I can't understand why it's not in the papers!" people kept saying, with perky topicality. "Why do the papers leave you alone?" someone asks Bonneville.
If Lord Justice Leveson was hoping for some escapism over the break, he shouldn't have tuned into this. In common with many witnesses to his inquiry, the Crawley clan had entered into a devil's bargain with the press, receiving protection from the newspaper baron Sir Richard Carlisle in exchange for his marrying Lady Mary. In a moral dilemma of the kind in which Fellowes specialises, the storyline turned on whether it was better to preserve a marriage or be pilloried in the prints. At times, the writing risked overdoing the contemporary parallels. The weakest subplot – in which the aristos dashed through the woods looking for a lost dog – seemed distractingly reminiscent of the year's viral online hit, in which the posh bloke pursues the deer-worrying pooch Fenton.
Otherwise, the formula was the one that, over two seasons, has ensured Downton Abbey is at the opposite end of the ITV1 spectrum from Daybreak, not just chronologically but in box office terms. Dame Maggie Smith's Dowager Countess was well supplied with dyspeptic epigrams and the narrative continued to burn through history at a furious pace. We raced from Christmas Day – charades played upstairs, planchette downstairs – to New Year's Day in 20 minutes. This haste was rather forced on the story because the centrepiece of the episode was to be the trial of Bates the valet, on charges of uxoricide, and, though the series has not always been a stickler for historical accuracy, most viewers would have known that the courts knock off over the holidays. Even so, Fellowes further goaded social historians by continuing to dramatise the Earl of Grantham's remarkably precocious approach to workplace legislation and eerie prophecies of EU employment laws. The Crawleys serve their own Christmas lunch and New Year's Eve dinner, in order to allow the servants to enjoy their seasonal celebrations undisturbed. Still more startlingly, the domestics later host a party – the Servants' Ball – at which they dance with their employers. Although clearly in the tradition of Upstairs, Downstairs, which cut between the different parts of the house, Downton Abbey is most notable for collapsing the stately mansion into a sort of social bungalow, with servants and served in the same shots.
When Bates is found guilty and the judge puts on his black cap and sends him to hang by the neck, the earl, not content with dismantling the class system over the Christmas holidays, becomes an Edwardian Ludovic Kennedy, campaigning for the freedom of the Downton One.
Although maintaining the support of audiences and advertisers, series two of Downton Abbey disappointed many devotees of the opening run, with suspicions that ITV1's understandable desperation to get its cash cow back on show may have led to the 2011 run being written and made in risky haste.
However, neatly entwining the recognised TV genres of Christmas special (the Berkshire lawns thickly iced with fake snow) and courtroom drama, Fellowes enjoyably combined a legal cliffhanger (will the valet swing?) with a romantic one (will Lady Mary succumb to the early-Murdoch?). This post-turkey special returned to the sharp, fast writing and acting with which Downton reversed commercial TV's downturn.
Despite rumours of a climactic death – might a Crawley do a Nigel Pargeter off the roof? – all major cast members survived to be available for inclusion in season three. The only caveat is that Fellowes perhaps needs to remember that the house has stairs and that class war is British TV's great subject. The way things are going, the earl will begin the 2012 series doing the washing up while he cooks his butler's lunch.
