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<p>Downton Dawn of the Dead (With Matthew back as a zombie?)</p>
<p>Or</p>
<p>Downton Abbey Night of the Vampire (Sybil returns with fangs?)</p>
<p>Not the craziest of ideas considering the success of Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.</p>
<p>That would be awesome for all the dead characters to return, including Vera and Mr. Pamuk. Would we like to include Patrick (if really dead) and his dad?</p>
<p>I’ve been meaning to mention this in the context of burned maybe Patrick and his lack of accent. We know a British family. Their kid is 18 and has been in the US since he was about 5. His accent is almost American, but you can hear still hear a bit of British vowels if you are listening for it. I actually paid a great deal of attention to this the last time I talked to him, due to the issue of why burned maybe Patrick would not have a bit of a British accent. (Note that the accent of the adults in the family sounds as British as when we first met them.)</p>
<p>Well, I dunno. Burned maybe Patrick was an adult when he went supposedly went to Canada. It’s much less likely that he’d lose his accent. Not too mention, when he first s howed up as supposedly Canadian up in Canadia, wouldn’t people have wandered why he had a British accent to start with?</p>
<p>I think I would like to see Martha Levinson return to Downton.
Perhaps she could teach them a new dance step!
[Shirley</a> Maclain Moonwalking with Bobby Bonsey](<a href=“Shirley Maclaine Moonwalking with Bobby Bonsey - YouTube”>Shirley Maclaine Moonwalking with Bobby Bonsey - YouTube)</p>
<p>Maybe they could combine Maggie Smith in Keeping Mum with the Dowager. She played a mild-mannered grandmother who happens to kill people and put them in a pond. That would be cool on Downton. I’m sure they have a pond.</p>
<p>^that’s what will happen if we don’t pledge enough.</p>
<p>Of course they have a pond. It already contains Bates’ leg straightening device.</p>
<p>@missypie I’m guessing that some of the vowel sounds may have been retained because he grew up with a family with that accent? My mother grew up in a different part of the country (north) from where I grew up (south), and sometimes my vowels will sound more northern. </p>
<p>Patrick, on the other hand, would not have been around other Britons, so he might have lost the accent more easily. Some lose accents more easily than others, and some end up with a half-way accent (sound British to the Canadians, and Canadian to the British). I have a relative who moved to the States as an adult two or three decade ago; he makes several trips a year back to the UK and has a half-way accent. </p>
<p>Of course, this doesn’t answer the question of why they didn’t notice the accent when he was first picked up! </p>
<p>Personally, though, I found the whole storyline a bit cringeworthy, and I hope Patrick doesn’t come back. </p>
<p>As for what happened in the interwar years, obviously no prohibition, but there’s the Roaring Twenties (as represented by Rose), Great Depression (though I don’t really think they can do another storyline about Downton and financial problems), the rise of Nazi Germany and attempts at appeasement, extension of women’s suffrage etc. And of course, the twists and turns of everyday Crawley family life.</p>
<p>Maybe Edith’s new beau will prove to be a nazi supporter?</p>
<p>Nazis - hmm…interesting story line. Nazi sympathies were not uncommon in the British aristocracy - until the Blitz started. The young Duke of Devonshire married one of the (in)famous Mitford girls, whose sister was a flaming Nazi. She (the young duchess) is still alive today - the last surviving sister, and is the current Dowager Duchess of Devonshire.</p>
<p>Maybe Robert will fall under the spell of Oswald Mosley (who was himself the son of a baronet) and take to wearing brown shirts and marching in parades.</p>
<p>I wonder how the show would ever rehabilitate Robert from a misstep like that? After all, no one on Downton stays unlikable, or likable, forever. The sine wave of likability is constantly in motion for every cast member.</p>
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<p>Well, thank God he didn’t fall for the Ponzi scheme (or that Matthew talked him out of it)! What a scandal that would have been.</p>
<p>On the relaunch of Upstairs Downstairs, the sister of the lady of the manor was a Nazi spy. So for Downton to do that would seem like copying.</p>
<p>To be clear, there were 6 Mitford sisters and they seem to have divided into 2 groups of 3, with one group being much nicer than the other. When it comes to Unity and Diana Mitford, the behavior goes off the scale. Diana, who was strikingly beautiful, was Oswald Mosley’s wife, married at Goebbels’ house with Hitler as witness. They were locked up for the first 3 years of the war, until Mosley’s health let them be released. Unity was actually in love with Hitler and was so close to him it was at one time thought they might marry. She wrote Jew-hating stuff for Streicher’s Der Sturmer rag and tried to kill herself when the war started, using a pistol given to her by Hitler. Another sister stayed out of politics but the stories are that she was just as awful. Their father was a genuine fascist idiot.</p>
<p>But one of them - I think it was Diana - shared a room growing up with Jessica, who became a communist, civil rights activist and investigative journalist. She wrote about the KKK and is probably most famous for The American Way of Death - remember, the book that exposed the funeral business. </p>
<p>Deborah married the Duke and the last is Nancy Mitford, the novelist. </p>
<p>Weird family.</p>
<p>I took the Upstairs/Downstairs character as a take-off on Unity Mitford.</p>
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<p>Even on the original Upstairs Downstairs, toward the end of the series, there is a scene where Hudson, the stalwart butler, is bemoaning the state of the country and praises this new guy Mussolini (who is on the rise in Italy) and says he has the right idea about how to deal with society’s miscreants and trouble-makers.</p>
<p>Have we discussed the fact that Lord Carnarvon, owner of Highclere Castle (Downton Abbey) in real life, financed Howard Carter’s expeditions resulting in the discovery of King Tut’s tomb? The discovery was in 1922. I think Estate Agent/ lawyer dude should confess that he didn’t really invest Cora’s fortune in the Canadian railroad but instead used the money to finance the Egyptologist’s expeditions. They could have Howard Carter announce his results at the dinner table. Imagine how cool that would be!</p>
<p>I was so surprised at that King Tut connection! They even had little “Tut” trinkets around the castle. I saw the King Tut exhibit, and I don’t remember hearing that part of the story. Maybe they downplayed it, or I just didn’t notice since it was pre-Downton, but it still took me by surprise when I saw the piece on Highclere.</p>
<p>And as for Patrick - he had amnesia. Doesn’t that presume he had a head injury? Sometimes people with traumatic brain injury lose the power of speech temporarily and have to relearn to speak. If that happened to him, he would have learned to speak with a Canadian accent. Hmmmm? (Or should I say eh?)</p>
<p>Who’s Patrick?</p>
<p>Season 1 - Patrick was the original heir all set to marry Mary, but the family got word that he died on the Titanic, and that’s how Matthew came into the picture. Later, during WWI, a man showed up at the Downton “hospital,” badly burned and scarred, claiming to be Patrick. His story was that he ended up in a Canadian hospital with amnesia. There was some quick checking on his story and Robert concluded he was an imposter who had known Patrick, but not the real deal. Although Patrick was supposed to marry Mary, it was Edith who actually loved him, and she believed it was him when he turned up at the hospital.</p>
<p>Will Upstairs Downstairs have a new season this year. I really liked it.
What about Call the Midwife? Any news?</p>