The family receive a warm welcome at Duneagle Castle, visiting Rose and her parents in the Highlands. But there is no disguising the tensions between their hosts.Download Video Downton Abbey Story A Journey to the Highlands Episode On ABC Family Tv Online Tv Live Streaming Video. Online Watch Downton Abbey Story Full Episode Watch Stream HD Video on Internet TV.Carson is determined to keep the servants back at Downton working hard, but with a country fair coming up, will some be tempted to push their luck? Could romance be on the cards for Mrs Patmore? Beginning in the years leading up to World War I, the drama centers on the Crawley family and their servants. "The sun is rising behind Downton Abbey, a great and splendid house in a great and splendid park. So secure does it appear, that it seems as if the way of life it represents will last for another thousand years. It won't". In season 2, the lives of the Crawley family and the servants who work for them has been changed forever, since the Great War was declared at the end of the last season.
Lady Sybil (Jessica Brown Findlay) seemed to serve little else but the twin purposes of being the doe-eyed bombshell of the Crawley sisters, while also serving as something of a saint, as sweet-natured as she was progressively-minded. She wasn’t infallible, but she was pretty much the gentlest character in the series, a sweet woman aglow with goodness.
And in case anyone has forgotten the fate of our late footman William Mason, one need look no further than Daisy’s late husband to see that goodness is never long for this world. Lady Sybil dies as a result of eclampsia, and though the episode attempts to lull the viewer into a false sense of security, I found myself wondering if any other viewers felt the creeping sense of impending tragedy, a dread hanging over every other moment in the episode, until the preventable became inevitable.
I found it weird that I was choking up over a character that the narrative had done such a good job of weening us off of, but then the Dowager Countess (Maggie Smith) lost out to her grief, and I was done. “The sweetest spirit under this roof” indeed.
And all this, while Cora and Tom are awash in desperate, panicked tears, begging her not to leave them. It’s as profoundly messed-up as TV deaths get in this day and age, hardly affording us the quick rip of the sudden “What the hell just happened?” death, and leaving us to stew in our panic as we hope for an eleventh hour reprieve.
From Matthew’s (Dan Stevens) sudden recovery from paralysis to Cora’s recovery from Spanish Influenza, it’s not as though Downton hasn’t dabbled in miracles before. But there’s no miracle forthcoming here, and as Sybil slips away, and the distant cries of her newborn daughter break the stunned silence, we’re left with nothing but the Crawleys’ (and perhaps our own) unassailable grief.
This is beautifully filmed, with authenticity and societal values inherent in both script and acting. The story weaves in and out of two layers of society -- the masters and the servants -- giving us glimpses into the power struggles occurring on each level, and the colourful characters who inhabit both.
I particularly enjoy seeing the large-scale production involved in taking care of a household of this magnitude, and the care taken with all the details. Given today's rapid pace, it's almost peaceful to watch this deliberately slowed pace, and to get a genuine sense of what it was like to be an estate-owner in this period.
Housemaids who gossip, independent young men who don't appreciate the butler's code of honour, catty women and genteel sophisticates all combine to make this a very enjoyable romp among the rich of yesteryear!