Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse by David Mitchell

idiotic corporate abuse imaginable.
    So what’s to fear from Disney? They might make an entertaining film about a duck in space. It would be a lot edgier than Jar Jar Binks.
     
    Disney didn’t hang about, as we now know, and episode seven is currently in production, with JJ Abrams directing and most of the stars of the first film reprising their roles. Which means, sadly, that it’ll be episode eight, at the earliest, before we see Russell Crowe attempt to wrestle Chewbacca, Bill Nighy get exasperated with R2-D2 or a duck feel the Force.
    *
    Laura Carmichael deserves to be congratulated. Few actors have achieved her kind of success. Her portrayal of Lady Edith in
Downton Abbey
is so effective, and so affecting, that the character has started to become real. Not just to seem real to people watching television, but actually to
be
. The fact that this became clear on the occasion of her West End debut playing another role in no way diminishes the achievement.
    You may not be familiar with Lady Edith, or with
Downton Abbey
at all. Even if you are, you may pretend not to be. It’s not a particularly respectable show to admit to watching.
    Or is that nonsense? In some ways, it’s unassailably respectable: a Sunday night costume drama, oozing the cream of the British acting profession. But it’s not particularly worthy or worthwhile, and yet neither is it trashy or amoral enough to be watched with irony. It falls equidistantly between the two vastly separated stools of
Our Friends in the North
and
RuPaul’s Drag Race
. Watching it is nothing to be proud of, but neither is it sufficiently shaming to be conversationally interesting.
    I’ve seen every single episode. I think it might be my favourite programme. I enjoy it enormously. I also think it’s shit. Not badly acted or filmed, but appallingly scripted and structured. Utterly inept with regard to these elements of television production which I previously considered vital to a drama’s success – or certainly its enjoyability. Yet I undoubtedly do enjoy
Downton Abbey
, and not “because it’s so terrible”. I unironically enjoy it despite how bad it is. Is that what they call cognitive dissonance? Or is it just really liking footage of a stately home?
    So Laura Carmichael deserves much credit for turning the implausible words and actions in the script into a believable character. Lady Edith is the second daughter of the Earl of Grantham, who owns Downton Abbey (which is where
Downton Abbey
is set – it is not a real abbey, so he is not an abbot), and she has a very rough time. The plainer middle sibling, she lives her life like an emotional Frank Spencer, her heart always metaphorically being dragged along on roller skates behind a bus. The men sheloves either die or get engaged to her sister or both; or are too old or jilt her at the altar or both. Everything Edith turns her hand to – driving, farming, journalism – is greeted with hostility and scorn. She’s definitely the unluckiest of the three Crawley sisters, and one of the others has died.
    So, when the press night of a new production of
Uncle Vanya
at the Vaudeville theatre, in which Carmichael plays Sonya, was interrupted in a weird and unlucky way, I thought: “Of course, that
would
happen to Lady Edith.” And then I realised: Lady Edith has come to life.
    This is what happened: in the closing moments of the play, Lady Edith (Sonya) was delivering a soft and moving final speech to Ken Stott (Vanya) in which she exhorts him to keep his pecker up, when Sir Peter Hall, who was in the third row of the stalls, started shouting, or at least talking. Accounts vary, but he definitely wasn’t whispering. Accounts also vary as to exactly what he definitely wasn’t whispering, but he definitely wasn’t not-whispering “Bravo!” The
Telegraph
reckons he said: “Stop, stop, stop. It doesn’t work and you don’t work. It is not good enough. I could be at home watching television,” while