Never mind the new girl, there's only one jewel in Downton's crown...

By Jan Moir

PUBLISHED: 21:01 EST, 4 November 2012 | UPDATED: 05:55 EST, 5 November 2012

The star of the show: Dame Maggie Smith has shown in the ITV hit show as the dowager countess

The third series of Downton Abbey has ended in sunshine, with a cricket match and a note of uncharacteristic optimism.

The unlikely trio of Lord Grantham and his two sons-in-law, Matthew Crawley and chauffeur Tom Branson, have united to run the estate together.

But remember, it was not long ago that Branson was an IRA supporter boiling with a hatred of the English oppressors.

Although he has shucked his tweeds for black tie and has agreed to help run one of the greatest estates in all England (instead of helping to blow it to smithereens), life at Downton is bound to go horribly wrong.

But fans of the ITV series will have to wait until the Christmas Special to see exactly how wrong.

Still, it has been another hugely enjoyable series, the most popular costume drama since Brideshead Revisited more than 30 years ago.

Highlights included Shirley MacLaine coming all the way from America to urge everyone at Downton to modernise and just quit it with the trad stuff.

Appearing in two episodes as Martha Levinson, the mother-in-law of the Earl of Grantham, she crunched up the drive in her jazz shoes ostensibly to attend the wedding of Matthew Crawley to her granddaughter, Lady Mary, but primarily to do battle with Violet, the dowager countess.

‘Oh dear, I’m afraid the war has made old women of us both,’ she said when espying Violet for the first time.

‘I wouldn’t say that, but then I always keep out of the sun,’ retorted Violet, not to be outdone.

Once again, Dame Maggie Smith as the dowager countess has been utterly magnificent, the jewel in the Downton crown. Happily, it looks like she’ll be remaining there for some time to come.

Wedding bells: One of the highlights of the series included the marriage of Matthew Crawley and Lady Mary

Causing a storm: Lady Rose proved to be a dramatic introduction to the hit show

Dismissing reports that she has had a heart scare, she has told creator Julian Fellowes that she has no plans to leave the series.

Whether being tragic, comic, or jaunty as a weasel when delivering one of her acid drop aphorisms, she is the still centre around which all the action revolves. It is her reaction to events which Downton viewers most seek.

Elsewhere, the earl’s second daughter, Lady Edith, got jilted, and his youngest, Lady Sybil, died because the posh doctor wouldn’t listen to the middle-class doctor.

This gave Lady Cora a good reason to hate her husband until Violet intervened with a typical bit of wrangling. ‘People like us are never unhappily married,’ she informed her son. Almost everything that Violet says should be embroidered on a cushion.

Last night’s episode brought a scandalous new character called Lady Rose — the hitherto unmentioned 18-year-old great niece of the dowager countess.

Rose is as flighty as a Ryanair schedule and is having an affair with a married man. A taxi driver tipped off the family, as taxi drivers do. It seems that writer Julian Fellowes created Rose primarily so we could all go to the Blue Dragon nightclub in London and watch Matthew rescue her from certain ignominy.  

Warning: Matthew Crawley has a message for Lady Rose in a dramatic finale to the third series

High drama: There was a shock in store as Lady Rose Margadale embraced in the Blue Dragon nightclub

Less than impressed: Lady Rosamund Painswick and Lady Edith seemed less enamoured with the London club

‘The outer circle of Dante’s inferno,’ he cried, when he saw everyone doing the Lindy Hop and drinking apple juice cocktails. To be fair, the poor chap hasn’t been anywhere except the Downton drawing room for years.

Speaking of which. Under a full moon, under a red silk quilt, under pressure to produce a Downton heir toot suite, Matthew and Mary are getting tiresomely soppy. 

‘I will love you until the last breath leaves my body,’ he says.

‘We must never take each other for granted,’ she says.

The newly-weds, though, seem to have had trouble in the baby-making department. The couple keep bombing off to London on secret missions to See A Specialist; but did anyone consider that Matthew’s elaborate nightclothes might be to blame?

By the time he’s divested himself of his three-piece jim-jams set and de-tasselled his double-breasted dressing gown with its back vents, four-button cuffs and silk lapels, Mary is fast asleep.

However, they seem to have sorted it out. A new Crawley heir seems certain, and Downton the house has been saved.

Caught in the act: Lily James's character Lady Rose is spotted in the Blue Dragon night club having eloped with Margadale, played by Edward Baker-Duly

Jewel in the crown: Dame Maggie Smith was back to her best as Violet, Dowager Countess (left) while there were also starring roles for Laura Carmichael as Lady Edith and Samantha Bond as Lady Rosamnd Painswick

Hit: The third series, set in 1920, saw the return of all the much loved characters in the sumptuous setting of Downton Abbey

But what about Downton the television series?

Was it really only two years ago that the curtain rose on the first ever episode? From the first moment a Morse code message tapped out the news that Downton heirs James and Patrick Crawley had obligingly perished in the Titanic disaster, we have all been hooked.

It has actually been eight years in Downton time, even though no one has aged a whisker. A great deal has happened — a war, christenings, funerals, weddings — even though we rarely see these great events, only the aftermath.

There is usually a huddle on the church steps and someone — almost always Violet — will say something profound. After Sybil’s funeral she opined: ‘Grief makes one so terribly tired.’ 

Joyfully, series three saw a popular return to eavesdropping as a major plot device. Indeed, so much of it went on that there appears to be a sort of Eavesdrop Alley, which runs between the kitchen and the back door, via the pheasant-plucking room and the boot-blacking suite. 

Housekeeper Mrs Hughes is always down there, ears a-flap. When she isn’t there, butler Carson takes over, poking his great big head out of the silver cleaning cupboard like Yogi Bear peering round a tree at an abandoned picnic in Jellystone Park.

Character change: Branson has gone from an establishment hating chauffeur to helping Lord Grantham and brother-in-law Matthew Crawley run the Downton estate

Optimism: The series ended on an uncharacteristically positive note

Still, it’s hard to keep up with all the shenanigans in the servants’ quarters. What’s going on down there? Don’t these porridge-faced serfs realise there are langoustines to be served and newspapers to be ironed? Instead, they’re all chasing after each other in a Daisy-chain of unrequited love.

Daisy likes Alfred, but he likes Ivy but she likes Jimmy and so does Thomas. No one likes half-maid/half-velociraptor O’Brien, but without her insane plotting, nothing much would ever happen.

It was O’Brien who egged on Thomas the valet, telling him that dim Jim the footman was mad for him.

Yes, I know. Who could resist Thomas, a one-handed, Brylcreemed psychopath with fag ash breath and an evil smirk?

Thomas responded sensibly. He fondled Jimmy at every opportunity, then sneaked into his bedroom and kissed him while he was fast asleep.

Newlywed: Matthew Crawley and his new wife Lady Mary seem to have been having a few problems in the baby making department - perhaps due to his elaborate nightclothes

Loved-up: Matthew Crawley, pictured centre, has become increasingly soppy wife wife Lady Mary this series

Enter Alfred, right on cue, and a terrible scene ensued. It was so bad that Carson appeared in his dressing gown — a sure sign of calamity. Of course, Thomas was gay in the first series.

His sexuality was never mentioned in the second series, but now he seems to be gay again. And now that it’s out in the open, his homosexuality has conferred upon him a kind of nobility he previously lacked.

‘I am not foul, Mr Carson,’ he told the butler, who wanted to have him horsewhipped or at least banished from the house for ‘choosing’ his path in life.

But Lord Grantham was much more understanding. ‘If I shouted blue murder every time someone tried to kiss me at Eton I’d have been hoarse in a month,’ he said.

Elsewhere, Bates (the other valet) is finally out of jail and back at Downton, keen as mustard to start brushing dandruff off Lord Grantham’s shoulders again.

Has prison changed him? He seems a darker character than before and even put the frighteners on O’Brien by whispering ‘bar of soap’ in her ear. Tip. It works with little boys, too.

Drama: Carson was forced to appear in his dressing gown after an illicit gay tryst between two of Downton's staff members was uncovered

Impressed: The third series of Downton Abbey has impressed Jan Moir enough for her to eagerly await the drama's fourth outing

Meanwhile, there are big signs that the wind of change is once more sweeping through Downton Abbey. We know this because assorted characters keep wandering around saying things like: ‘It’s not like the old days, Mrs Patmore’, or ‘I’ve never been called a liberal in my life’.

Not everyone is thriving in the post-war world, but jilted Lady Edith is coming into her own. She says that ‘all sorts of toffs’ are writing for magazines, so she becomes a columnist.

She is promptly taken to Rules for lunch by her editor, who falls in love with her even though he has a mad wife in an asylum.

‘It cheers me to read your column,’ he says, as he twinkles and flirts and pours more hock. ‘Don’t be afraid of being serious.’

Yes. Speaking as a lady columnist myself, I can tell you that’s exactly how it happens, right down to the stifled howls from Bedlam.

Downton you’ve done it again. Roll on series four.