With the coming of the New Year PBS has begun screening the fifth season of Downton Abbey.  The plot of this ongoing saga revolves around the family of Lord Granton and the domestic household’s attempt to cope with the changes of the 20th Century both on a social and personal level.  Over the past four years the program has gained a large audience in Britain, Canada and the United States.  What is the reason for the success of this weekly television program that follows the day-to-day fortunes of these diverse characters?  

A part of Downton Abbey’s success, I think, is the beauty and novelty of its setting, a splendid English country estate, and the life of its inhabitants.  The abbey itself is an actual stately home of great and imposing size, with majestic reception rooms and extensive grounds, gardens and woods.  The set is lavish with period furnishings, costumes, automobiles and the actors portray the manners of the time.  The family and the servants are a mix of amusing, dedicated and frivolous characters, both family and servants involved in on-going adventures and intrigues. 

All of this takes place in the sweep of the events of the early Twentieth Century.  Over the four preceding seasons the inhabitants of Downton Abbey have dealt the Great War and its aftermath, and are now being dragged into the economic and political world of post-war England.

As entertaining as the drama is in its replication of past time and with its complex plot, I think that there is a deeper attraction that draws its faithful audience.  This attraction I would suggest is an experience of nostalgia – a sentimental longing for the past.  Psychological research has demonstrated that nostalgia can act as a very positive influence of the past.  In the case of Downton Abbey this may help a person reminisce on past personal or imaginary experiences often pleasant in nature that can open up for the individual promptings to a rich social exploration in the present. 

There is, however, perhaps a deeper role for nostalgia:  for some viewers of this fictional dramas nostalgia may be a means of dealing with the anxieties and turmoil of our contemporary reality.  In the pressures of the early 21st Century, a viewer may experience a sense of having a vicarious place of belonging and meaning in the fictional activities of the characters in the early 20th Century drama. 

Although such belonging is imaginary and transitory, it still can act as a respite from the worries and pressures of today’s life, and on a less conscious level provide, at least for some time, an experience of greater stability and trust in abilities to cope with present tensions and worries.  That beauty, goodness and order existed and were maintained, although threatened and nearly overcome in very difficult past times, can lead to a renewed trust in present reality.  (The authors have in fact made some efforts to incorporate into the story line the beginning of several contemporary areas of real concern.)  Fiction can offer the possibility and hope of resolution, and the reassurance of accompaniment in contemporary anxiety.