We have a lot to think about this week.
We can fret over the news that President Donald Trump has decided to stride fearlessly into emoluments land, officially filling his private purse from the public treasury by scheduling next June’s hugely lucrative U.S.-hosted 2020 Group of Seven summit of world leaders for one of his own properties, the Trump Doral golf resort in Miami.
Which, curiously, has been hemorrhaging money since its owner took up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
But it turns out that in this whole huge country there was no better location than a money-losing resort – owned by the president – within earshot of loud jets at the Miami airport and traffic on a busy highway. In sweltering Florida June heat. During hurricane season, to boot.
Yes, the chief executive of this nation is using his office to direct a massive public contract to . . . himself.
And he will likely get away with this unprecedented act because his own political party is unwilling to challenge him.
Really.
Or we can brood about rain and wind bringing about the disappearing foliage we spent last week enjoying. Sooner than we want to think, we’ll have just bare branches out there, shivering before snow blessedly blankets them until they begin stirring in the spring.
But better than either of those choices, we can spend a few hours distracting ourselves by escaping into a world where the most important item on the menu is … well, the menu. And the dinner guests and the house guests, including one foreign gentleman who died in Lady Mary’s bed and had to be carried back to his room by Lady Mary, her mother and her trusted lady’s maid.
Yes, I’m talking about Downton Abbey, a movie currently playing (at least through Thursday) at Concord’s Red River Theatres. It’s based on one of the long-running British soap operas that are the lifeblood of U.S. public television stations, including NHPTV, and picks up the story several years after the end of the TV series.
The soap itself had all the required ingredients of the genre: a well-to-do “upstairs” extended family, complete with black sheep and scheming hangers-on, and a squabbling “downstairs” family of cooks, butlers, housekeepers, kitchen maids and – depending on the time span of the soap – a chauffeur.
In the course of four seasons of TV’s Downton Abbey, the upstairs family’s willful daughter, Lady Mary’s youngest sister, Lady Sybil, fell in love and eloped with Tom Branson, the Irish (!) Catholic (!!) chauffeur (!!!), but within a few seasons she returned with Tom and their winsome little daughter, only to die – neatly but dramatically – in her own bed, surrounded by her loved ones.
Deaths in this genre of soaps are invariably neat and in bed with sorrowful loving families in attendance. Or, on the rare occasions when it’s a messier death – as in, say, a car crash – it takes place conveniently off-screen.
Another Downton daughter – crabby and jealous Lady Edith – hung around for a few seasons, causing malicious trouble for her prettier and much nicer sisters before being married off and sent to her own never-seen stately home.
Lord and Lady Grantham, heads of the family, served mainly as foils for the other characters, although we were regularly reminded that Lady Grantham was in fact a rich American whose arrival brought a huge infusion of money for the property-rich but cash-strapped family.
Tom and his adorable daughter, of course, remained with the family, serving as a handy bridge to the robust downstairs family, headed by a stern-but-kindly butler, his demanding-but-kindly housekeeper wife and a sharp-tongued-but-kindly cook who preside over an assortment of maids, groundskeepers and other servants, including a trouble-making valet who snoops and sniffs out everyone else’s secrets while zealously hiding his own.
Virtually all reassembled for the film, which – among other things – allows glorious Highclere Castle, the building cast as Downton Abbey, to shine in widescreen splendor.
The movie’s plot is a simple one. King George V and Queen Mary are touring their country with the royal court in attendance, inviting themselves and their retinue to all the stately homes that dot the countryside.
The drama lies in Downton’s preparations for the visit – and in the inevitable rivalry between the royal attendants and the faithful Downton downstairs denizens, who are determined to outwit the snooty visiting crew. Machinations ensue!
Do they succeed? Well, is the Queen English? Does the sun rise in the east? And I won’t be giving much away to say that finally even the trouble-making valet – Thomas Barrow – has his brief, shining moment in the sun.
(“Monitor” columnist Katy Burns lives in Bow.)