Historian Attacks “Downton Abbey”
One unalterable rule of life: when something or someone is popular, people will start throwing stones at it. Simon Schama‘s blistering attack on “Downton Abbey,” the PBS series that in its weekly broadcast airing grabs higher ratings than “Mad Men” or “Game of Thrones,” is in line with that life rule. Schama, an historian at Columbia, calls “Downton” a kind of “cultural necrophilia,” adding that it “serves up a steaming, silvered tureen of snobbery.” Schama also singles out the show’s historical inaccuracies. I wasn’t aware that “Downton” was aiming to be one of those fact-based documentaries that Schama occasionally commits on telly. It is a kind of fantasy. Or, as Wilde’s Miss Prism once put it, “That is what fiction means.”
