Abbey bored

Last night PBS began broadcasting season three of “Downton Abbey”, one of those big costume soaps that form the backbone of “Masterpiece Theatre”. There’s been any amount of buzz about it, including all kinds of interviews in print & broadcast media with the cast.

Up until last week I must have been the only person in western civilization not to have seen the show. I think I tried watching the very first episode years ago, because I really love Maggie Smith, but I gave it up as a bad job.

However, some TV critic, in his round-up of 2012, raved about the Christmas episode, so I streamed it last week, and watched until the last, deadly clichéd dog was down. That’s 90 minutes of my life I’ll never get back.

Here’s the thing: without having seen any other episode (except about 15 minutes of that first one), I could map out all the story arcs, figure out all the character relationships and lay out what’s going to come down the pike.

This, to me, is not entertaining. So I revert to being the only person in the country not glued to the TV on Sunday evenings, or committing it to DVR.