Downtown Abbey is a British television series. First aired on September 2010 in the United Kingdom and on January 2011 in United States. The series was created and wrote by Julian Fellowes, an English film director and screenwriter. Downtown Abbey is one of the most successful British series, it is set in Highclere Castle. Best known now, by Downton Abbey. It is a fictional drama series which relates the story of a country house family called “Crawly” who live an idyllic and bustling life alongside their servants who are, on the whole, living a different life but are just as strongly graded as their masters so that, within their world, the butler is King and the housekeeper is Queen, with all their hopes and dreams. So what kind of relation does the two side (upstairs and downstairs) entertain between each other? And which impact it had on the series?

In Downton Abbey life, not everyone is the master, indeed, Robert Crawly is the head of the house; with his wife Cora a rich American lady. They have three daughter. Mary is the eldest one and she has the merit of being clever and determinate. Robert and Cora have no son, so Mary is the heir of their fortune. So they think that it is preferable for their daughter to marry a member of the family to not lose their fortune and their prestige. Edith is the second daughter and she is not as strong as Mary. She is less self-confident may be because she is not very beautiful. Sybil in contrast has always been the rebel one, she is interested in many domain of life, like politics and poverty, and she is very helpful and generous. However, life for these three ladies has not been very complicated. But it is not the case downstairs where women of the same age as Anna, Daisy or Amy whom did not receive lot of prsents from life. At the beginning of the first season we can clearly see that there are huge differences between the Crawly family’s life and their servants’ life. It is not only in the way of life but also in the way of thinking, and even in the way they dress. For example, the ladies of aristocracy had to wear a dresses for each occasion; one in the morning, for the teatime, and another in the evening, all beautiful and classy dresses.in contrast; Maids were not as lucky as their ladies. "The maids had to make their own uniforms of two dresses: a print dress with a plain apron for cleaning in the morning, changing into a black dress with a more decorative pinny for the afternoons and evenings. indeed the same situation was for men too, I give you a sample example, when during the war, the aristocracy even though they did not necessarily participated in the war, they have different uniforms, generally the red one for great occasion, whereas for the footmen and common people the uniform was the same, it was green. Downstairs, we can see that life is not easy and that people everyday life is turning around upstairs people. They wake up in the morning to satisfy their masters’ desires who were living largely uncomplicated lives.

The crawly family, however- and I really love this side of them- are very kind with their servants, and in many episodes we can see them very close to them and the member of the family always try to help them, and I like this human side shown in the series. Yet, it was much criticized, indeed the press' main criticism of the accuracy of Downton Abbey was that the show presented the two classes of people -- the servants and the served -- as too interconnected and friendly. Generally, in series or movies playing the 19^th and the beginning of the 20^th century setting, usually, point a purely professional relationship (master and servants) in which there is no feeling of mercy. But, as I remarked, I really found Downton different, so that in many episodes as I already mentioned; we can notice that the member of the family are very close to their servants; for instance, Mary is very close to Anna his maid and she tell her about all her secrets. In the first season when the Turkish men died in her bed, the first person she called to help her was Anna, and in other episodes, Mary again is very sentimental with Mr. Karson and we find her in one episodes in the fourth season, crying in his arms, which was moving. Robert Crawly is also very friendly with his valet bates, and in an episode in the third season, when Bates is released from jail, Robert run to him and hold him with wild joy. Cora also entertains good relationship with her maid Sarah and they discuss lot of things together. We can also mention Sybil who helped a lot a maid to become a secretary in the first season also, and finished married with the chauffer of the family ‘Tom Branson’.

In general, the most important thing that I wanted to say is that Fellowes while writing the script had made something not usual in this kind of stories between the aristocracy and their servants. In my opinion he was different and original, in a way that instead of writing just a simple story as we are used to see on TV about the continuous struggle between masters and servants, we have in this masterpiece a purely professional relation -upstairs, downstairs- which is in the same time a beautiful story of humanism. But still as Thomas say in one episodes of the fourth season “Robert is friendly, but we still call him SIR!” in fact it is exactly the truth. While the upstairs preach kindness, they do not pass an occasion to put their servants to their places when something goes wrong. for instance; Cora in one episode of the first season had heard her maid Sarah talking downstairs about a guest that came in the house, even though Cora did not like this person too and gossip about him with her, she immediately asked her to stop talking about the guest and to never repeat it again.it is in this kind of situation that we can see that in Downton Abbey the differences may not be crystal clear but it is present.

All in all, in my opinion Downton Abbey could not be differently writing, during the Edwardian Era society was divided into two kind of people, the household and the workers. In Downton, the two classes of people are the servants and the served. Fellowes has maybe not really describe the real situation that were occurring in that period of time between these two classes, by making the ‘the served’ too friendly and too kind, yet, Downton Abbey is entertainment, not documentary. Even so, Julian Fellowes, had a definite historical goal. He conceived of the series as an illumination of country-house life in the early twentieth century, particularly of the separate but interconnected orbits of the aristocracy and the servants. In that goal, Fellowes succeeds with panache.