Read this: Domestic woe for the BBCs Earl of White City | Markets Analysis

Summary: Forget the historical nitpicking, Downton Abbey has been a huge success. Part melodramatic soap opera and part historical romance, it is a quality production that has achieved record audiences because of its appeal to a British society that remains obsessed with class. In recent weeks, that truth must have struck Thompson, a figure not unlike Downton Abbey's Earl of Grantham a liberal gentleman with a goodish fortune trying to protect an institution faced by problems in the servant quarters. - thisislondon.co.uk