The real stars of Downton Abbey

Downton Abbey Debutante BallIt’s hard to believe we’re only one Christmas Special away from the end of ITV’s award-winning period drama Downton Abbey. After six years and 51 episodes (including specials), Sunday evenings just won’t be the same again for the 10-12 million UK viewers who have stayed loyal to the show throughout its run.

Equally bereft will be the cast and crew, says Chris Croucher, producer of seasons five and six. His own relationship with the Carnival Films-produced show began as a second assistant director on season two and he reckons that at least 50% of the crew has been on the show since the start. 

“Usually by now we’d have started pre-production on the next series so it feels really strange that it hasn’t happened this year. We’ve all been phoning each other about it.”

Croucher believes high crew retention is one factor that helped the show maintain its passion and authenticity: “People came back year after year because they loved it. We always said it was a show about a family, made by a family. It was a production environment where everyone was willing to listen and take advice on whether something felt true to the story or characters. 

We all felt like we had some ownership of the show and that our voices mattered. A lot of the credit for that goes to the show’s wonderful executive producers, Gareth Neame, Liz Trubridge and Nigel Marchant, and the creator of the show Julian Fellowes.”
 


Originality was key to the show’s success

In terms of the show’s appeal to the audience, Croucher places a lot of the credit at the door of Fellowes and his “brilliant writing”. He also believes that part of the success of the show is that it wasn’t an adaptation of a novel – so no-one knew where the story was going next. 

“Audiences love period drama but with literary adaptations they often know how the plot is going to unfold. I can’t tell you how many times people have asked me if Lady Edith (played by Laura Carmichael) is going to have a happy ending in the final Christmas Special.”

In terms of the production itself, he says it has become more challenging “as the production’s world has expanded. At the start, the story was mostly centred on Downton Abbey but by the end we had a lot more locations to think about,” says Croucher. “That meant more planning – because you need to be able to shoot all the necessary scenes across the series at one time, rather than trying to return to them again and again. 

 


“With a show like Downton, that’s not just about production cost and cast availability, but also about the kind of locations you’re working with and the permission you need to be able to shoot there.”

Croucher says he had an old-fashioned, tried and tested way of managing this process: “I had an area in the office called the ‘wall of truth’ that was covered with post-it notes that acted as the basis of the production schedule. 

“For me,” he says, “this works better than trying to keep all the information in a software programme because you can stand back and get a proper perspective. I was helped enormously with this by Matt Carver, a first AD who is a master scheduler.”

It wasn’t just the increased number of locations (the local village, farms, a school, cottages, trips to London etc) that presented a challenge as the Downton Express picked up a head of steam, it was also the fact that there were so many more labour-intensive scenes to contend with. 

“Early on, we might have had one ball or one hunt per season. But by the end we’d be doing all that in one episode,” says Croucher, “and that’s not even counting the set pieces. In series six, we had a car race (a kind of proto-Grand Prix) which culminated in a fatal crash. That was a year in the making and was especially challenging for our production designer, Donal Woods.
 


Keeping the show’s motor running was rather difficult…

Explaining why the car race was so complex, Croucher says: “The first issue was sourcing the vintage cars, because they are such rare items and are invariably the pride and joy of private owners. One of them was worth £12m. In the actual shoot they are driven by their owners, rather than stunt drivers.”

And getting the location for the crash right was also an issue that presented challenges. “The scene is set at Brooklands (the world’s first purpose-built motor racing circuit), but Brooklands has been modernised. So we used Goodwood for some of the shoot instead, because that gave us the grandstand. But you’re not allowed to burn a car at Goodwood and it doesn’t have a bank on the track, as Brooklands did. So we also had to shoot some of the scene at a second location in Surrey.”

It’s not just the planning of big set pieces that is a challenge, but also the knock-on effect on the rest of the schedule. “The Downton shoot would run for 26 weeks, 141 shooting days. But the big scenes take longer to shoot – which means you have to move faster through the other scenes. 

One way the team got round this challenge was by introducing double-banking – which is where two separate production units shoot two episodes at the same time. The shift to two production units made it possible for them to deliver more ambitious scenes.
 


The world is a big old place

The car race is the biggest scene Carnival ever attempted, but there have been other challenges, says Croucher, such as a Scottish stag hunt, Matthew Crawley’s car crash, the Debutante Ball and, of course, the infamous Downton fire. “Fire is the word that all location managers dread,” says Croucher, “so imagine how we all felt when we turned opened the scripts for series five and saw ‘that’ scene. It took a lot of planning.” 

In terms of the geography of filming, around 40% of the show was shot at Highclere Castle near Newbury – the stately home that Downton Abbey is based upon. Another 40% took place at Ealing Studios, and the remainder took place at various locations, including Bampton village and Cogges (aka the series’ Yew Tree Farm) which are both in the Cotswolds.

Ealing’s role was surprisingly expansive, says Croucher: “All of the downstairs of Downton Abbey was filmed there, because most of the big houses nowadays have converted that area into museums or tearooms. The Downton bedrooms were also at Ealing, because we found that the real bedrooms were too small once you start getting the lights and equipment in. By the end we had three stages up and running at Ealing.”

One of the biggest challenges with a show like Downton Abbey is historical accuracy, not just in terms of costume and make-up “but every tiny detail of behaviour,” says Croucher. “Which knives and forks? Would they put milk in their tea first or not? Would they shake hands or stand up when people entered the room? I became so immersed in all the etiquette that it has even started affecting the way I behave in real life. 

All of it is so important because when the audience sits down to watch the show they want to be immersed in the world. They don’t want the spell to be broken by some small mistake in the detail.”

The expertise of Julian Fellowes played a key part in this, supported by the likes of production designer Woods, costume designer/head of wardrobe Anna Robbins, historical advisor Alastair Bruce and many more. 
 


As the show expanded in ambition, it’s noticeable that a number of characters went abroad – but the camera never followed them (Germany, France and the US all feature in the back story). Croucher says: “We did consider taking scenes abroad – possibly to New York. But in the end we decided it didn’t fit. The House is a key character and we felt we’d lose something if the show went off on safari.”

Testimony to the success of Downton is that it didn’t just woo UK audiences, it was watched in 250 countries including the US, where co-production partner PBS has built up a passionate audience. It also won major industry awards in virtually every category you can think of.

So one obvious question is whether the show could have gone on for longer. “People say to me that it could have gone another two or three series,” says Croucher, “but my feeling is it ended at the right time. 

“It’s tough to sustain when actors leave, so imagine if we suddenly lost Carson (Jim Carter) or Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville). I can’t see the show coming back for a spin-off but there has been talk of movie version, and I’d love to be involved in that.”

As for the legacy of the show… “Aside from Mrs Patmore’s Yorkshire Puddings?” quips Croucher. “Downton transformed the view that no one was interested in period drama. Just look at the market now. And it really put British shows on the map again. It showed we could go toe to toe with the best of US shows.”
 



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