Downton Abbey

Last night I watched the latest episode of Downton Abbey having noted criticism in The Mail that it was going downhill.  I have to agree that despite prodigious efforts to introduce emotion and high drama, the hero seriously wounded, one of the characters dying, a deathbed marriage etc. I did find myself singularly lacking in feeling.  I remained obstinately dry-eyed throughout. Downton Abbey is a very handsome drama with an excellent cast so where is it going wrong?  I put my finger on the size of the cast.  There are simply too many characters.  The writer has also clearly taken on board the lesson repeatedly given in screenwriting classes that in film drama scenes should be kept short.  Unfortunately in this case they are too short.  The narrative flits about all over the place so that in no scene are the actors given enough time to build their characters.  They are expected to create a character out of  sometimes a single line.  The fashion in TV drama for the short scene has reached epidemic proportions.  I often remark that in CSI Miami I think David Caruso must be paid by the word his character has become so laconic.  He certainly doesn't have to work very hard as he rarely has to memorise more than a line. The result is very shallow characterisation. In drama the audience learns about the character through the things they say.  It is true that in film speech is less important than in theatre - you can show something of the character's mood and responses in close-up - but they still need to say something. Downton Abbey needs to concentrate on just one or two of the main characters and allow the actors a bit more space to develop them instead of taking the scatter-gun approach which paradoxically makes the story neither more interesting nor dramatic.  Normally, being a writer, I like to lay the blame on everybody else when a drama goes wrong but in this case I'm afraid I think the writing is to blame unless of course its the editing in which case I apologise.