“Victoria”: The Next “Downton Abbey”?
How do you follow a Sunday-night smash like “Downton Abbey”? The conclusion of Julian Fellowes’ upstairs-downstairs hit has left a huge gap in the schedules. “Victoria,” a new eight-part drama, has won the same coveted Sunday slot on British TV and on PBS, but will it inspire the same devotion? On paper, it sounds like a winner. The “journey†of Queen Victoria is an irresistible one, fighting anti-German feeling and forging one of the great Royal love affairs of all time to become a figure of national respect. Of course, her era also involved imperial expansion and all its brutalities.
