‘Downton Abbey’ Season 3 Finale Gets 8.2M Viewers

COMMENTS (13)

• Presumably this audience tally, though undoubtedly “older,” played a part in the network Nielsen’s being down Sunday night.

  Comment by EK — Tuesday February 19, 2013 @ 2:12pm PST  Reply to this post

  • “Undoubtedly Older?” Really?! My daughter-in-law & son are just 30! So are most of their friends. At the end, when Matthew Crawley was killed, they sent us a text: “WTF?! Really?!”
    “Undoubtedly older” indeed…Better do a re-count…

    Comment by 4everyoung — Tuesday February 19, 2013 @ 10:44pm PST  Reply to this post

  • WTF indeed! I am so angry about Matthew. He was my reason for watching the show.

    A viewer no longer.

    Comment by Mary Nix — Wednesday February 20, 2013 @ 4:10pm PST  Reply to this post

    • Me too! He wasn’t my only reason for watching the show. However, I wonder if the writer of this show is a very unhappy person. Can’t we enjoy some happy ending and romance? Reality isn’t really always this awful is it? And if it is, shouldn’t our favorite shows be more of an escape from it. I can’t remember being so angry about the time devoted to enjoying a show with such delight to only be crushed. My mother’s and wife’s heart simply will not be able to endure watching the next episode. The ending is completely ridiculous!

      Comment by Sad mama — Friday February 22, 2013 @ 9:16pm PST  Reply to this post

• This made the “Downton” finale the most-watched show on broadcast TV, although I believe two cable shows, “Walking Dead” and he NBA All-Star Game, outdrew “Downton”.

  PBS missed a chance to raise million$ for it’s member stations by not running pledge breaks during this season’s episodes.

  Comment by Joseph — Tuesday February 19, 2013 @ 2:13pm PST  Reply to this post

• Putting pledge breaks into Downton Abbey would kill the show faster than recasting the Lord Grantham part with Pauly Shore.

  Comment by george yanok — Tuesday February 19, 2013 @ 2:38pm PST  Reply to this post

  • Hah!

    Comment by Joe — Wednesday February 20, 2013 @ 3:41am PST  Reply to this post

• I don’t know about you guys here IN SO CAL

  They ran pledge break at beginning of the show and at end of the show on PBS SO CAL former KOCE Channel 50

  Comment by Kelly — Tuesday February 19, 2013 @ 3:25pm PST  Reply to this post

• Every time it starts with the usual, “Brought to you by Mr. and Mrs. Snooty Billionaire…and viewers like you,” I have to laugh. Viewer’s like me? Hardly.

  Comment by Greg — Tuesday February 19, 2013 @ 3:37pm PST  Reply to this post

  • Do you give to your local PBS station?

    Those big sponsors and underwriters take care of the big picture, but the local stations count on the average viewers to cover operational expences.

    Comment by Matt Stephens — Tuesday February 19, 2013 @ 6:36pm PST  Reply to this post

• At the startling conclusion of this season’s Downton Abbey, with Matthew Crawley, lying in a ditch, eyes open, blood coursing from his temple, I asked my husband, “Is he dead?” He answered, “Yes,” to which I replied, “Oh my, there’s going to be a lot of talk about this at the water cooler tomorrow morning.

  All I could think of was how Lady Mary will react to the loss of her husband within mere minutes of the birth of their first child. Watching Matthew, delirious with joy, tearing along a narrow country lane in his roadster, I thought, “This is not going to end well.” And within seconds a truck came barreling at him from the opposite direction.

  Mouth agape, I had to remind myself – as if I’d been watching a horror film – these people aren’t real. They’re made up characters.
  Creator Julian Fellowes knows how to entice us with his kaleidoscopic plotlines, and we fall for them – cliché alert – hook, line and sinker. And to snatch Downton Abbey from us, just as we were getting settled in, when, among other twists, there are now two single-parent babies, is the “unkindest cut” of the television season. (Shakespeare could get away with using double superlatives.)

  I have to confess that after watching three seasons of this upper crust British soap opera, my husband and I still can’t identify, by name, many of the characters. There are so many it is impossible to keep them straight. Twenty-four regular characters, upstairs and downstairs, and thirty-nine recurring and guest actors are a lot of names to remember.

  One of those, an antagonist to the Dowager Countess, is Martha Levinson, mother of Lady Grantham, played by Shirley MacLaine. She has shown up only once so far, and thank heaven for that. Shirley MacLaine has her place in the world of acting, but, in my opinion, it is not at Downton Abbey. Whatever they were aiming for with her intrusion, I say, “Get thee back to the USA and let us be.”
  Among the characters whose names we’re sure of are Lord and Lady Grantham, Lady Mary, Carson the butler, and Violet, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, played by Maggie Smith who, in the eyes of many, steals the show with her imperious bearing and judiciously placed zingers.

  Smith, interviewed on “60 Minutes” on the evening of the last episode of the season, says that she has never watched an episode of Downton Abbey. For her the pleasure is in the acting. At 78, I hope she sticks around long enough to watch herself demolish everyone whose behavior or opinions displease her, while many of us are thinking something like, “Go, girl,” that crude Americanism that would give the Dowager Countess the vapors and is undoubtedly incongruous with the hoity-toity goings-on at Downton Abbey.
  Perhaps you are aware the NBC turned down Downton Abbey, believing that American audiences would not have an appetite for a British historical drama set in a country manor in Edwardian England.

  Reflecting on their lack of vision, the network honchos must be astounded and a bit chagrined by the show’s monster success.
  Although it would probably have been a mistake to put Downton Abbey on network television. There are many who watch PBS who never go near network TV. Plus, a PBS berth gives the show a cachet it could never achieve on NBC.

  The NBC execs have obviously forgotten or never knew about the extraordinary success of the award-winning Masterpiece Theater series Upstairs, Downstairs, which ran for sixty-eight episodes, from 1971-75, and involved a similar aristocratic family, the Bellamys, during the same era, and had much the same flavor. Upstairs, Downstairs was “must see TV” on Sunday nights and was just as much discussed on Monday mornings.

  But many Downton Abbey fans weren’t even born when “Upstairs, Downstairs” pioneered the upstairs/downstairs prime time television concept. And, to my surprise, practically nothing has been written about it during the Downton Abbey hysteria.

  I recently watched a few episodes of Upstairs, Downstairs to see how it compares to Downton Abbey. Along with the splendor of its settings, Upstairs, Downstairs had the added presence of the handsome and urbane Alistair Cook to brief us on what we were about to see. Current host Laura Linney is a fine actress, but no one, including Russell Baker who did it for a time, could replace Alistair Cook.

  Alas, we must content ourselves with commoners – through spring, summer, fall and another winter – before we can hie to that grand Edwardian manor, known in real life as Highclere Castle, but ever in our imaginations as Downton Abbey.

  Comment by Pat Jennings — Friday February 22, 2013 @ 8:42am PST  Reply to this post

• I am in agreement with most of the comments I’ve read. But, at first, for me, I wasn’t all that into Downton Abbey. I could watch or not, however, the more I watched, the more engrossed I became until it was like, “I can’t miss this Sunday night!” At the conclusion of this series when Matt gets killed, I was just blown away. It does indeed seem cruel, but I believe that is the creative genius that lies within the writers. There has to be those unexpected aversions. The roller coaster rides we get give the plot sparkle and wonder and make us crave for more, wondering what’s gonna happen next. I wanna know when does the next series begin? Somebody tell me. And, what do we have to “endure” in its absence?????

  Comment by Cynthia Nelson — Tuesday February 26, 2013 @ 7:38am PST  Reply to this post

• I think what upset viewers most was that Downton Abbey was an escape from too realistic CSI bloody cop shows and unbelievable ridiculous, talent and realty shows that Americans all ages are bombarded with and sop over with, case and point viewers who like Bones for the satirical dialog(even there are corpses) and then immediately turn off American Idol, because they can’t stand any incredulous judges and infighting have just about had it with realty Tv, In Downton Abbey, war was displayed but with a sense of inferring not in your face,and period peace is of interest,for the sets ,costumes etc, But when the producer started to kill of people for plots sake, he lost me, my younger son and his girlfriend were much turned off,a big Ho Humm was heard inthe family room

  Comment by Jim Madaraz — Tuesday February 26, 2013 @ 11:09am PST  Reply to this post