* MASTERPIECE CLASSIC: DOWNTON ABBEY. 9 p.m. Sunday, WHYY12.
YOU CAN watch "Downton Abbey" alone, but it's not nearly as much fun.
That's probably true of most television, but last month, at the Season 4 "Downton" premiere screening in New York, I finally got it.
Surrounded by a decorous-looking crowd that likely included some particularly generous contributors to PBS, I was hit by the laughter.
Not to mention the hoots, the boos and the hisses.
With the lights on, I wouldn't have pegged most of these people as, um, demonstrative, but there in the dark I felt as if we were all experiencing a moment from the early days of moving pictures.
We had no piano player but we were well-supplied with old-fashioned melodrama. Creator Julian Fellowes' stories of life above and below stairs at a British nobleman's great house are aimed, unashamedly, at our hearts and our tear ducts, and they feature characters millions of us have come to love.
Or, in a few cases, to happily loathe.
Season 4, which begins six months after the accidental death of Matthew Crawley (Dan Stevens) - and I truly hope I'm not the one breaking that news - doesn't tamper with a proven formula, one that treats the woes of Daisy the kitchen maid (Sophie McShera) as seriously as those of the newly widowed Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery).
This season does, however, make clearer than ever that the real star of "Downton Abbey" is the property itself. Actors may come and go, inconveniently or not, and viewers may grouse, but Fellowes is composing a love letter to a way of life that's pretty much past. He's not dishonest about it - we'll see and feel the despair of the penniless and the powerless - but he's not apologizing for it, either.
And in the end, it may be easier to let go of Matthew (and poor Lady Sybil) than it will of our stubborn romance with a system that, let's face it, worked better for the few than the many.
- Ellen Gray