There will be no spoilers in this review of the new season of "Downton Abbey," premiering Sunday on PBS - not just because I wouldn't want to ruin the pleasure of watching the series, but also because writer-creator Julian Fellowes supplies more than enough spoilers in the script.
Now in its fourth season, "Downton" continues with much of what has made it wonderful and even more of what makes it maddening. Fellowes never met a cliche he couldn't repurpose to move the upstairs-downstairs story of the residents of a great house in Yorkshire who are reacting to, and in some cases, resisting the social changes that upended England after World War I.
The year is 1922 and the old pile is gloomy, still in the shadow of the death of Matthew Crawley (Dan Stevens) at the end of last season. His mother, Isobel (Penelope Wilton), and widow, Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery), appear all but broken by their shared loss. Mary is so consumed by grief, she can't bring herself to be much of a mother to her infant son, George.
Her father, Robert, the Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville), and her late sister's husband, Tom (Allen Leech), are struggling to maintain the estate's fiscal stability. Robert's American wife, Lady Cora (Elizabeth McGovern), smiles indulgently at everyone, and his mother, the Dowager Countess (Maggie Smith), continues to make withering pronouncements on everyone's behavior.
The economic changes in postwar England will bring a new character to the story, Charles Blake (Julian Ovenden), assigned by Lloyd George's government to assess the stability of old family manses to determine which will make it on their own and which should be broken up. Blake and Lady Mary clash from the outset, and you'd have to be comatose not to get the telegraphed message in their overstated iciness.
Tom Cullen shows up in what appears to be a larger role of Lord Gillingham, an old family friend who played with Lady Mary when they were both children. Also on hand is his valet, Green (Nigel Harman), who riles up the downstairs staff with an abundance of overstated charm.
Telegraphed plot
Although there's a critical event in the life of a major downstairs character that you won't see coming, there are plenty of other occurrences that announce their imminent arrival with all the subtlety of an out-of-control train. These will involve romantic events in the lives of Mary's sister Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael) and the half-baked Lady Rose MacClare (Lily James), career options for Alfred (Matt Milne), and scullery maid Daisy's (Sophie McShera) obsessive crush on Alfred.
"Downton" is hardly the first TV series to telegraph plot developments by milking cliches, but the script weaknesses do a disservice to both the better moments in the script and to the cast. This is especially evident in Dockery's wraithlike performance in the early episodes of the season. Yes, her grief is palpable, but the usually excellent Dockery walks around as if her entire body has been Botoxed and she can only speak in a monotone, as if she's doing an impersonation of actress Gale Sondergaard in some '40s noir spoof.
Fellowes has created great characters, but as a writer, he fails to listen to them and pushes them around with abandon thinking he's advancing the story. But the story is the characters, and many of them deserve better.
If this were a minor blip in "Downton," it could be overlooked, but it keeps the series from being as good as it used to be and from what we want it to be. Telegraphing makes events seem inauthentic, manipulative. That said, when legitimate character-based emotional moments are permitted, they hit with a bang and we love these characters all over again.
The series intelligently probes social changes in the early 1920s. We've already been hooked by how much women's roles in society are expanding in the postwar years. In season four, the issue of race is woven into the story with an African American jazz singer, Jack Ross (Gary Carr), based on the real-life Leslie "Hutch" Hutchinson. We see not only how the upstairs crowd reacts to an African American at Downton, but the staff as well.
As much as "Downton" has been about social evolution in the early 20th century, it's also been about economic changes. They may not be quite as sexy, but they're inalterably linked to the central story lines of the series. As Tom continues as the agent for the estate, he wrestles with where he belongs in the family, now that Lady Sybil is dead. He can't go back to Ireland, but he doesn't feel that he is "one of them," as he puts it. Yet it's because he's not one of them that he is nudging the micro-economy of the estate forward, gradually overcoming Robert's resistance.
Near-catatonic grieving
Then there is the complicated issue of Mary's role. Because Matthew seems to have left no will stating otherwise, his share of the estate is designated for his infant son, George, with Mary playing only a minor role. That seems fine with her at first because she's too lost in near-catatonic grieving. But we already know that can't last forever.
Financial issues will continue to play a significant role in "Downton," not only in England, but also, it seems, in the U.S. where Cora's brother, Harold (Paul Giamatti), has gotten himself tangled up in the Teapot Dome Scandal. Harold will show up in the so-called Christmas episode (because that's when it was broadcast in England) at the end of the current season. He'll be traveling with Mom. That, of course, would be Martha Levinson, played by Shirley MacLaine. The notion of MacLaine and Maggie Smith trading barbs and trying to upstage each other would be a welcome Christmas present any time of the year. In this case, it'll be Feb. 23 in the U.S.
Despite the pluses and minuses of the script, the cast generally delivers the goods, especially Phyllis Logan as housekeeper Mrs. Hughes, Joanne Froggatt as lady's maid Anna Bates, and Jim Carter as Carson, the overseer of the household staff. Brendan Coyle as Bates, Robert's valet, and Rob-James Collier as the ever-scheming under-butler Barrow, are, like Dockery, sometimes done in by the script weaknesses. Wilton more capably acts her way out of the corners into which the character of Mrs. Crawley is painted.
David Wiegand is The San Francisco Chronicle's executive features editor and TV critic. E-mail: dwiegand@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @WaitWhat_TV
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