Oh no--Lady Marjorie is on the Titanic!

This is a spoiler only if you, like Dr. D. and me, had never watched “Upstairs, Downstairs” and are just now seeing it as consolation for the absence of “Downton Abbey.” Strangely, although there are predictable parallels, we are finding that the earlier series, broadcast from 1971-75, is edgier and grittier, and shows downstairs life as possibly a little closer to what it might have been.

“Why couldn’t they have just killed James?” he asked. We knew the answer: James’s death wouldn’t have resulted in enough interesting plotlines.

Dr. D.’s and my shocked reaction to Lady Marjorie’s fate made me think of an old New Yorker cartoon in which parents are watching a young girl race from the room sobbing as the mother explains, “Beth just died.”

Fiction, on the page on or the screen, exists to draw us in and then play fast and loose with us, kick our feelings to the curb. And the more drawn in we are, the harder we fall.

Isn’t it wonderful?