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Downton Abbey season premiere moves fans to tears, but what happened to thewedding?

Lady Mary wore a modest ivory gown with high neck and sheer sleeves, reminiscentof what Queen Elizabeth wore when she married King George in 1923.
Courtesy of ITV
On the set of Manor of Speaking (left to right), Jackson HIcks, Helen Mann,butler, Ernie Manouse, Robert Patten and Roseann Rogers.
Photo by Clifford Pugh

Fans of the hit British TV series Downton Abbey had a lot to laugh and cry about in the season three U.S. premiere Sunday night on PBS. But there were also some puzzling aspects too.

We watched the two-hour episode at the Melcher Center for Public Broadcasting at the University of Houston, along with around 30 other diehard DA fans. One viewer in the audience wore a flower-bedecked hat and white gloves; another sobbed uncontrollably as it appeared that Lady Mary Crawley (Michelle Dockery) and Matthew (Dan Stevens) were finally headed to the altar.

After the two-hour season opener ended, everyone stayed for the premiere of Manor of Speaking, a live half-hour show hosted by Channel 8's Ernie Manouse that promises to dissect every plot turn of the wildly popular drama during the season.

Mary and Matthew exhibit one modern touch: They fight over money.

For the first episode, Manouse was joined by former British vice consul Helen Mann, Rice University professor Robert L. Patten, society caterer Jackson Hicks and Downton Abbey superfan Roseann Rogers. They appeared on a set that resembled a drawing room library in an English country home — complete with a butler, although he seemed more like Lurch than Jeeves.

Among the topics they discussed based on audience questions:

1. Why couldn't unmarried women have breakfast in bed at an English country home in the early 1920s? Hicks said at the time married women had a more leisurely life than their single counterparts.

2. Why didn't voyagers on a cruise change clothes on the first night? Their trunks hadn't been unpacked yet, Patten said.

3. Why was Mary's simple ivory wedding dress with a high neck and sheer sleeves so understated? It was keeping with the style of the times, Rogers said. (But her jeweled headband was far flashier.)

4. How could Lord Grantham be so stupid to put all of his investments in Canadian railroad stock? At the time it seemed a good idea, until the head of the railroad died in the Titanic disaster in 1912 and the business went belly up. (It really happened.)

We were most looking forward to the highly anticipated showdown between Maggie Smith, who portrays Violet Crawley the Dowager Countess of Grantham, and Shirley MacLaine, who debuted as Martha Levison, the mother of Cora, Countess of Grantham (Elizabeth McGovern).

Indeed there were loads of one-liners between the two acting titans that had everyone laughing, although MacLaine's role wasn't fleshed out nearly enough before her series departure.

Here's hoping she'll be back.

While the Crawleys are worried about keeping the manor in the family, their servants have more pressing problems, like life and death. Bates remains in jail but shows his mean streak, Mrs. Hughes may have cancer and a couple of servants may be losing their jobs.

Upstairs, Matthew again finds out he will inherit a fortune — he's the luckiest Brit alive — but his high-mindedness nearly scuttles the wedding and makes him seem uncaring about his wife's needs to preserve her lifestyle.

But the couple does exhibit one modern touch: They fight over money.

As for the wedding, we've waited three seasons for Mary and Matthew to tie the knot — so it was a bit of a disappointment when series creator Julian Fellowes, who writes all the episodes, shut viewers out of the wedding, reception and honeymoon in France. All we got to see was the ride to the church.

But the couple's 15-second kiss on the night before the wedding — with their eyes closed because it's bad luck for a prospective groom to see his bride before the ceremony — was so romantic that it almost makes up for being shut out of their big moment.

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Movie Review

Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney go off in trashy film The Housemaid

Photo courtesy of Lionsgate

Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney in The Housemaid.

Both Amanda Seyfried (the upcoming The Testament of Ann Lee) and Sydney Sweeney (Christy) are starring in movies with Oscar ambitions this year. By sheer coincidence, the two actors are also co-starring in The Housemaid, a thriller coming out within weeks of their more ambitious works, one that is likely to be seen by many more people than those prestige plays.

Sweeney is given top billing as Millie, a down-on-her-luck ex-convict looking to land any type of job so as not to break her parole. She finds a too-good-to-be-true lifeboat with Nina (Seyfried), who hires her to be a housemaid for her large house on Long Island, where she lives with her husband, Andrew (Brandon Sklenar), and daughter, Cecilia (Indiana Elle).

After a warm interview, Nina almost immediately becomes highly erratic, whipping back-and-forth between happy-go-lucky and rageful. It seems clear that Nina is suffering from mental health issues, as she’ll often accuse Millie of misplacing or stealing items that she didn’t take. Andrew, apparently used to Nina’s tirades, tries to protect Millie from the worst, something that grows increasingly difficult as Nina ups the ante.

Directed by Paul Feig (A Simple Favor) and adapted by Rebecca Sonnenshine from the bestselling book by Freida McFadden, the film is likely the trashiest mainstream movie to come out in 2025. The first half of the movie relies not on story but on moments as Nina embodies the word “hysterical” to an unbelievable extent. The resigned acceptance of the abuse by Millie, as well as the saintly patience of Andrew, make almost every scene laughable, as nobody seems to be acting anywhere close to how a person would normally react to such extreme situations.

The scenes and the performance of Seyfried are so over-the-top, in fact, that it’s clear that the filmmakers are in on the joke. It’s next to impossible not to have a little bit of fun while watching the actors react to outrageous incidents as if nothing is out of the ordinary. The worse Nina acts, the more Millie and Andrew retreat into their chosen roles, and the funnier the film becomes.

Fans of the book will know that the story changes course, eventually turning into a more stereotypical thriller that also has some relatively gnarly visuals to offer. But the trashiness continues, with Sweeney’s, um, assets repeatedly on display in both clothed and unclothed ways. The sex appeal of the R-rated movie makes it an outlier, as recent studio films have shied away from asking their big stars to disrobe completely.

Both Seyfried and Sweeney are far from their Oscar hopeful roles here. Seyfried is given free rein to act as brazenly as she pleases, and she takes full advantage of that ability. Sweeney seems to have been told to be much more reserved, and unfortunately that results in too many wooden line readings. Sklenar continues his breakout streak (It Ends with Us, Drop) with a role that allows him to show more range than either Seyfried or Sweeney.

The Housemaid is an unusual type of movie to be released at a time of year when most films are either those aiming for awards or more family-friendly fare. Despite its many flaws, it’s still an enjoyable watch that features a variety of crazy scenarios not typically seen in movies nowadays.

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The Housemaid is now playing in theaters.

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