This is good news on many fronts. It proves the series is so popular that a third season will be in the works, and the introduction of Shirley MacLaine can only create more plot lines than found in a cemetery.
Ms. MacLaine has been around quite a while, and anyone who knows anything about Shirley also knows that she'll tell you she's been around before, likely several times, being a solid believer in reincarnation, namely her own. I don't know if she's ever claimed to be Cleopatra, but playing Lady Cora's mother will put her birth at around 1841, certainly a rich storyline era.
She's likely to tell the household she couldn't vote for Lincoln, but did indeed sleep with him before he unfortunately took up with that troubled Mary Todd. Maybe she'll insist on a Jack Finney 'Time and Again' plot twist that has her interrupting the great-grand parents of Mark Zukerberg, thereby depriving the world of Facebook and its IPO.
Even if they play it "straight" Ol' Shirl is likely to waltz in during the 1918 Armistice and tell the British how the Yanks bailed their butt out in the latest war with Germany. She'll probably hint that it's going to happen again, but she'll wait for Season Four, or Five for that. No sense spoiling things.
No less than the executive producer of the show, Rebecca Eaton, is looking forward to having Shirl and Lord Grantham's mother, Lady Violet, have a sword fight with their canes.
If any of this leaves you wondering what is Downton Abbey it is best explained that it is an English costume drama, starting in 1912, somewhat on the order of 'Upstairs, Downstairs,' but set at a country estate.
The series has taken the literary and public television world by storm. Reading lists have been written so that fans can read more about the era; read about the books that helped give rise to the show. The show has worked its way into columns and even a book review on a fresh translation of Kama Sutra. I don't know if Jay Leno has quipped about the series yet, but it can only be a matter of time.
The series starts in April 1912 as the footman is ironing the day's newspaper to dry the ink so that Lord Grantham doesn't smudge his hands. The news is not good. The Titanic has sunk, but at least the ink has been made to dry. Anyone who has read The New York Times for many years knows that the oil-based ink used to smudge something fierce, until it was replaced by the current water-based ink. I now feel bad that I never thought about having the paper pressed before I dove into it all those years.
There is sex, of course. Well, sort of. The oldest daughter, Lady Mary, a pleasant faced young girl who resembles an ironing board and hardly seems kinetic enough to disturb dust, quite surprisingly hosts a rake from the Turkish embassy in her bedroom one night. Lady Mary apparently turns into a moving violation, because the chap croaks and is carried out in the dead of night and placed back in his room, where of course he's discovered dead in the morning. English Watergate ensues.
World War I starts, and everyone gets patriotic. Lord Grantham, being too old to be called back into active duty, does his best by dressing in his old uniform and looking like he's ready to invade Poland at any minute, if only Whitehall would give the phone in the library a ring and green light the operation.
It's a British costume soap opera, that can be interesting because we see a way of life that was surely unlike anything anyone ever experienced in the United States, even the very top of the 1%.
It's going to be interesting to see how they work Shirley into this world of stiff upper lip and stuffed shirt. I for one can't wait for her to pad into the kitchen one morning, hung over, in her nightie, light a cigarette and commandeer Mrs. Patmore's toaster.
The Fourth of July should have such fireworks.
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