HBO's new mini-series, Parade's End, offers a darker, more realistic look at Edwardian England:
... “Parade’s End” tells the story of a bad marriage, set in a much broader context of a rotting civilization.
And that’s the real difference between it and “Downton Abbey.” That show is a gauzy anachronism in period costumes; the first novel of “Parade’s End” was published in 1924, and the series is enmeshed in the great cataclysm of the time, underscoring the cruelty of the age as much as its charm.
It’s more cleareyed about a lot of things, including the British class system. Even kindhearted masters don’t confide in their servants; they barely talk to them. [...]
And unlike “Downton Abbey,” which used the trench warfare in France mostly as a plot device to keep young lovers apart, “Parade’s End” is, above all else, a treatise on the Great War, the massacre of an entire generation of young men at the front, and also the poisoning of an entire class looking on from the safety of club chairs and literary salons. [...]
“Downton Abbey” may be sweeter and easier to follow, but it’s like a new desk stripped and distressed to look like an antique. Next to it “Parade’s End” looks like the real thing, less to modern tastes perhaps, but all the more distinctive.
