Downton Abbey Read online

  To Emma and Peregrine, Downton’s principal inhabitants.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title

  Dedication

  Foreword

  Episode One

  Episode Two

  Episode Three

  Episode Four

  Episode Five

  Episode Six

  Episode Seven

  Episode Eight

  Christmas Special

  Picture Section

  Cast List

  Production Credits

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  NOTE: Dotted lines alongside the script text indicate sections of text that were cut from the original script to make the fi nal edited version.

  FOREWORD

  Season Two of Downton Abbey is very different to Season One, and that was entirely deliberate. The year before, when we first began to think about shaping the show, we decided our starting point should be 1912; that is, just before the end of the Old World, but nevertheless in a recognisable place, with railways and cars and telephones and telegrams, which a modern viewer could connect with. Of course, not very many people live like the Crawleys now, but not very many lived like them at the turn of the last century.

  By taking 1912 as our opening, if the series did not prove popular, we would be able to end it with the news of the outbreak of the Great War, and that, to a degree, would give us a satisfactory conclusion. However, if there should prove to be a demand for more, then the second season would take place during the First World War, and the third would chart the early years of the 1920s. In other words, the initial three seasons would cover three periods, which, despite happening within a comparatively short space of time, were nevertheless quite distinct from one another. And so the business of finding a new colour for each series didn’t really present a problem, because the material was bound to be very different, and that would dictate the tone.

  The challenge, naturally, was how to cover the war. In the end, we decided that, just as we had opened Season One with the news of the Titanic in order to pinpoint where we were, similarly we would open Season Two on the battlefield, so there would be no mincing about. From the first scene the audience would know the war has begun. The other decision we made was that we would go forward two years into the middle of the fighting. This was partly because, after the declaration of war, as with all wars, there was a kind of slow-burn start-up, when we wanted to begin with a big bang, literally, but it would also mean that all the characters could have war back stories as the series opened; they could have met other people, they could have different experiences or, in the case of Matthew, a fiancée has arrived in the gap since we last saw him. Added to which, we wouldn’t have to show them in training for the Army. That had all happened. They could jump out of the screen, like Athena leaping from the head of Zeus, fully formed fighters, caught in the Sturm und Drang of the Battle of the Somme. Anyway, that was the decision.

  Of course, this last detail was quite a tall order in itself, but we felt strongly that we had to accompany Matthew to the front, so it was a problem to which we needed a solution. The point was, we felt it would be cheating not to go to the battlefield. The alternative would have been to present it like a Greek tragedy, with everything happening offstage and people coming in and saying, ‘It’s terrible over there,’ but that felt very feeble as an option. In the end, we had a tremendous stroke of luck when someone told us about a chap in Suffolk, Taff Gillingham, who was a great First World War aficionado and who had actually built a field of trenches, where he and his friends would get dressed up in uniforms and race around firing at each other. All of which was a miracle for us, because the cost, if we had not found him, would have been prohibitive. But even with his extraordinary maze of trenches to make the most of, we knew we wanted the core and heart of the show to remain Downton Abbey itself, and so this series was always going to be about a civilian family being plunged into the demands of total war.

  The First World War (of course, every time one makes these generalisations there are six experts living in Thetford who write to tell you how wrong you are, but still…) was the first conflict that became a civilian war to any great extent. This was not so much because of German bombing, as it would be in 1940. Rather, it was the sense that the country had to get behind the war effort in a way that they hadn’t when their menfolk fought the Boers, or in the Crimea. Those episodes, like wars in the eighteenth century, were generally considered to be happening ‘over there’, while the First World War happened to every man and woman in the land.

  Part of this phenomenon was manifested by many, many landed families volunteering their houses for war work, usually for medical use – not invariably, but usually – and so, for us, that seemed a good template to go with. The houses weren’t requisitioned; it wasn’t like the second war, when they were commandeered for the services, for ministries and for schools. That wasn’t it. In 1914 these people gave their houses over freely.

  In fact, in real life, Highclere Castle became a hospital. The Countess of Carnarvon at that time was a brave, adventurous and vivid figure, and she decided that the proper use of the house was as a hospital, and she paid to kit it out. Actually, she was quite a remarkable character and I am sure worthy of her own television show. Born Almina Wombwell, she was in fact the illegitimate daughter of Alfred de Rothschild, who adored her and gave her half a million as a dowry, with plenty more to come – simply colossal sums at that time. However, while Almina did a lot of good, we weren’t tempted to imitate the truth, as when Highclere became a hospital the family moved out, and we needed the Crawleys to stay put. So it seemed more sensible to convert it into a convalescent home, and have the Crawleys, like many families who did this, remaining in their house throughout, even if they did have to retreat to a few rooms. That seemed a much better narrative option for us. With them all ensconced in the house, we would go through the war, through the Armistice, and then use the Christmas Special – the first one we had attempted – to bring us into the New Year, that is January 1920, and the dawn of the new age.

  As a final note, the reader may notice some discrepancies between the scripts and the finished shows. Sometimes the actor might have altered a line on the day, and not every change is one I would go to the stake to defend, but I think it quite interesting for the audience to be able to compare the two versions. Mainly the differences reflect cut material, some of which is hopefully quite useful to see, as it can shed light on the existing plots and characters. I might as well confess here that these scripts were really too long when they were first written. By the time we got to Season Three I was producing shorter scripts, because I had more or less found the rhythm of how many pages would go into an episode, but in Season Two I hadn’t quite got there. ITV allowed us to vary the length of the episodes in an effort to overcome this, and sometimes the shows would run to an hour and ten minutes or an hour and fifteen minutes, but, to be honest, it didn’t really work. The main problem was that it allowed one more commercial break, and it seemed to many viewers that they were being swamped with advertisements, so we reverted to the stricter one-hour length for Season Three, which was better.

  To reach the required length, as the edit takes shape, Gareth Neame, Liz Trubridge and I discuss what might go and what must stay. Naturally, not all our ‘musts’ are the same, but it has evolved into a pretty good system and, while there are of course things that I regret, which you will see, nevertheless I am very proud of the programmes we achieved. At any rate, these are the complete scripts of the second series of Downton Abbey, which sees our characters face the ultimate test of war. Some are strengthened by the ordeal, a couple are defeated, but all of them are
changed.

  Julian Fellowes

  ACT ONE

  1 EXT. TRENCHES. SOMME. NORTHERN FRANCE. DAY.*

  The air is full of flashes and the noise of guns. The Somme. November 1916. Men, covered from head to foot in mud, are pouring over the side of the trench and slipping and sliding into its murky, sodden safety. The last figure, as filthy as the rest, pulls himself back to his feet. It is Matthew Crawley.

  MATTHEW: Is that you, Davis? How are we doing?

  A slime-caked individual nods.

  DAVIS: The stretcher bearers are with the boys now. Quite a few gone, I’m afraid, sir.

  MATTHEW: Go back to the dug-out. I just want a moment with Sergeant Stephens.†

  Matthew walks forward through the cramped and crowded trench.* A private soldier addresses him as Matthew passes.

  MAN: Well done, sir.

  MATTHEW: Well done to all of us. Who are you?

  He cannot see for the dirt obliterating the man’s face.

  MAN: Thompson, sir.

  MATTHEW: Then yes, well done. Sergeant Stephens?

  A man with the stripes of a sergeant ministers to the wounded who are being loaded onto stretchers. He stands and salutes.

  STEPHENS: Sir.

  MATTHEW: I want every wounded man taken down the line before it starts to get dark. We’ve bloody well lost enough of them for one day.

  * We started in the Somme because it was a great bloodletting, and a massive, hideous event in which many, many men died. In other words, we chose to begin at the deep end as far as the war is concerned, but without yet committing Downton to its role in all this, because we wanted that decision to be reached on screen. I think it was fair enough; the enormity of the casualties coming back built and built and built, and by the end of 1915 people were aghast at the numbers of dead – figures that were reaching into all families up and down the land. High and low, nobody was spared, and it was a shared grief, which is something you don’t see all that often, when a whole nation is bound by the same raw emotion. By 1916 I think that was true of the first war.

  † I knew that eventually I wanted to use William (the footman from Downton) as Matthew’s servant, but it seemed a bit neat to bring him in at the beginning, so we have a good performance from Stephen Ventura, who plays Matthew’s initial servant, Davis. I’m always fascinated by how important it is to get good actors to play small parts. As most people making drama know, one line badly delivered in the middle of the scene can kill it dead. In this area, we have been lucky in our casting director, Jill Trevellick, who is meticulous when it comes to casting any part, but one of the bonuses of being a hit show is that people like to be in it. We have also been very fortunate in getting actors like Peter McNeil O’Connor, who played Sergeant Stephens, and other marvellous players in the supporting roles. They were all very talented.

  * In larger, more splendiferous films about the first war, you see huge trenches, tremendously wide, but this is quite untrue, because in a wide trench one grenade would kill thirty people. Only by keeping them narrow, and by making them dog-legged and zigzag, could an explosion within them be contained, which, over four years of war, saved many lives. I read somewhere the complaint that our trenches were too narrow, but they were, in fact, built by Taff Gillingham to the exact measurements of how the real trenches were designed. On top of the simple matter of life and death, being in these trenches made the claustrophobia they must have had to put up with so vivid. What was it like? Digging caves out of the mud walls to squat in? And how did they survive the sheer physical discomfort of it all, being permanently covered in mud, being permanently soaked? It must have seemed almost beyond endurance. I found all this tremendously interesting, but also very, very moving. These were men drawn from all walks of life, many of them used to a high degree of comfort. And yet the complaints – the public ones, anyway – were astonishingly few.

  2 INT. MATTHEW’S DUG-OUT. FRANCE. DAY.

  Matthew staggers in to find Davis is there before him. A paraffin lamp burns. His appearance is even more grotesque. An envelope is on the makeshift desk.

  MATTHEW: When did this arrive?

  Without waiting for an answer, he opens it.

  MATTHEW (CONT’D): Good news. We’re to be relieved today by the Devons. The men can finally get some rest, and I’ve got a few days’ leave coming to me.

  DAVIS: What will you do with them, sir?

  MATTHEW: Oh, London first. To remind myself what real food tastes like. Then north for a couple of days, I suppose.

  He gives his servant rather a playful smile.

  MATTHEW (CONT’D): Naturally there’s a girl I want to see while I’m there.

  DAVIS: So I should hope, sir.

  They chuckle. Davis has managed to wipe his own face and hands. Matthew now takes off his Sam Browne and hands it to Davis to clean.

  DAVIS (CONT’D): It’s strange, isn’t it? To think of our old lives just going on as before? While we’re here. In this.

  MATTHEW: It’s more than strange. When I think about my life at Downton, I feel like Heinrich Schliemann excavating Troy. Every part of that existence seems like another world.*

  * I tried to save the line about Schliemann, but I lost, which I think is a bit of a shame, because one of the things we do in Downton is make references to things that people would have known about at the time, without necessarily explaining them. Matthew would have heard about Schliemann’s excavations of what he believed to be Troy – ‘I have looked upon the face of Agamemnon,’ and all that – and even if we think some of his conclusions historically dubious today, nevertheless there is nothing dubious about the artefacts he found, even if the attribution to Agamemnon and Troy is a little bit wobbly. The point being that it was thought at the time that Schliemann had found Troy, and so it’s absolutely natural that Matthew would make a reference to it. But in the end, you can’t keep everything, and there have been worse casualties.

  3 INT. HALL. DOWNTON. DAY.

  Not quite. The hall is a hive of activity. Carson is supervising and the other servants are there as well. A stage is being erected. A banner spans from gallery to gallery: ‘Help Our Hospital And You Are Helping Our Boys At The Front’.† Anna is crossing the space with a pretty newcomer, Ethel Parks, who looks disgruntled.

  ANNA: We normally have everything done before the family wakes up, but it’s all at sixes and sevens today. I’ll go through it with you tomorrow when we’re back to normal.

  ETHEL: I do know how to run a house.‡

  They go into the library.

  † Now we go to the house because, of course, the public have tuned in so they can see high jinks at Downton Abbey, and we don’t want to keep them away too long. First of all, to take the house and its residents into the conflict, we start with a commitment to the soldiers at the front, and a fundraising event, but we do not yet suggest they should make any great sacrifices. This is, if you like, the transitional stage, when the family and the staff realise that they’ve got to get behind the war effort and do their stuff, but they haven’t really accepted the degree to which they can be helpful, because it will disturb their daily lives profoundly. I think it’s realistic. They’re well intentioned, patriotic, loyal, but not yet quite ready to sacrifice their way of life.

  ‡ I didn’t know, when I wrote this line, that Ethel Parks would be with us for two series. But here is a deliberate writing trick, which is to begin a character with a distinctive attitude, so that instead of Ethel being just another maid – which makes it harder for the actress or actor to define their character – you give them a tool at the start to work with. The good ones – of which Amy Nuttall is certainly one – will immediately build on that. Here we are suggesting the kind of independent spirit that would become much more in evidence as the century wore on. More and more, young people felt they were not born to serve in the same way as their parents had been. They didn’t think (or they thought less and less) that their destiny was to spend their lives cleaning a house for som
eone else. Many working-class girls no longer believed they had to be a drudge until they died. The screen persona of the film actress Joan Crawford – i.e. the shop girl who goes on to have a career or make a great marriage – worked for her because millions of women all over the world were thinking exactly that. She represented a spirit of rebellion and a desire for change, and became a great star on the back of it. Here, Ethel’s first line – ‘I do know how to run a house’ – is a rejection of Anna’s authority over her. We, of course, know that Anna is only trying to help, but her helping hand is batted away.

  4 INT. ROBERT’S DRESSING ROOM. DOWNTON. DAY.

  Robert is getting into a colonel’s uniform, helped by William. A strap has come adrift. William ponders.

  ROBERT: It goes under the epaulette.

  WILLIAM: I’m sorry, m’lord. If I’d known, I’d have asked Mr Bates about it before he left for London.*

  ROBERT: Because I’ll be in uniform a lot of the time in future.

  WILLIAM: Does being Lord Lieutenant mean you’re back in the Army?

  This is a sore point for Robert. He shakes his head.

  ROBERT: Not exactly. The Lord Loot is responsible for the Army in the county while the war’s on. Manoeuvres, training, recruitment and, of course, the Territorials.

  He gives the footman a wry look.

  ROBERT (CONT’D): But no. I’m not back in the Army. It appears they don’t want me.

  He half smiles as he says this, but it is very painful.

  WILLIAM: Your lordship, can I ask a question? Only, when they brought conscription in, I thought I’d be called up straight away. I’m young and fit…

  ROBERT: You could always enlist.

  WILLIAM: I would, but it’s… difficult.

  ROBERT: You know your own mind.

  WILLIAM: But when I am called up, I won’t be sorry; I’ll be glad.

  ROBERT: Just try to be ready. You don’t have to be glad.*

  * This is a minor joke, in that a lot of valets and ordinary people didn’t know how uniforms worked, which was a problem when the whole country had to be militarised. Bates, of course, was Robert’s soldier servant in the Boer War, so he doesn’t have any problems with uniforms, but he’s away in London at his mother’s funeral. And William, the footman who is acting valet, is struggling.