Downton vs EastEnders: let the Christmas class war begin

PREPARE for ‘class war’ as ITV’s posh soap Downton Abbey and the BBC’s blue-collar favourite Eastenders go head to head in the battle for TV viewers at peak time on Christmas Day.

According to The Guardian, Julian Fellowes’s costume drama has no intention of being outdone by the misery-laden Albert Square soap. “Have your starched lace handkerchiefs at the ready,” writes Vicky Frost, “for gloom, scandal, a fight on the hearth rug (although the only casualty is porcelain), and enough tears and heartache to power a Walford omnibus edition.”

Frost and other Fleet Street writers were shown a preview of the Downton Christmas special last night on the strict understanding that they could not give the plot away.

All we can be told, it seems, is that the two-hour episode will see the aristocratic Crawley family and their servants celebrate Christmas and New Year in 1919. Viewers will also get to know the result of trial of John Bates, the valet accused of murdering his wife Vera, and will find out if the country’s poshest ‘will-they-won’t-they’ couple, Lady Mary and Matthew Crawley, become an item.
 
Actor Dan Stevens, who plays Matthew, says he has grown used to people trying to “worm out of him whether the two end up together” and admitted that he had been forced to hide the scripts away from his wife.
 
With a break-up, punch-up, animal cruelty and an unexpected romantic twist, the Daily Mail agrees that it sounds more like a soap opera than a drama set in a stately home. But Fellowes apparently has no problem with the drama being labelled a “posh soap”.

Either way, The Daily Telegraph says Fellowes has delivered a “deliciously nuanced, wonderfully performed piece” that will have viewers “weeping in all the rights places”.

Downton's director, Brian Percival, denies his team is aiming to upstage EastEnders. "We don't set out to beat anybody. If you make television to do that, then that's the kiss of death. We just set out to make the best show we can, something we're all proud of."

Of course, squire! ·