The attitudes of the characters are too contemporary — servants treated with consideration, sitting around the dining table gabbing instead of scrubbing floors or managing the fireplace 17 hours a day, jetting off to the village for errands, marrying for love and not social position etc. The original Upstairs Downstairs was soooo much more realistic.
Soap opera, you must remember. Top of the line, but soap opera. And Fellowes is such a damn good writer. His writing and the skill of the actors makes it seem that one is watching real people, or at least real people as we reading a good novel might imagine them to be. And the way he plays with our emotions. He is always surprising me with his plot twists, such as the way he brings “Thomas” “into” the family. I read they are going int the 4th season, and in the twenties there are so many things that can happen.