We snuggled in together last night to view succeeding installations of the series we'd begun watching last week of Downton Abbey, a quintessentially British-aristocracy program produced for the BBC which, like all such series focusing on the antideluvian British class system of yore remains a perennially fascinating social period in British history. Like all such upstairs-downstairs dramas it was well-realized, entertaining to the point of viewer addiction in its portrayal of human relations.

Formulaic it may be, but the unique situations revealed under the rigid social class system that prevailed in Britain for so many generations present as a social laboratory where outsiders to the system can peer through the lens of a cinematic magnifying glass, thanks to elaborate plot lines, an excellent acting cast, and the period-piece social conventions added to the glimpses of lives led in the great and distinctive houses of the time. The 'grand piles', as people now are wont to describe them.

The interaction between the British aristocracy, ennobled by a belief in noblesse oblige, yet carelessly imbued with the distinction of social exceptionalism that only a titled caste can achieve lifting them to a position in society somewhere between the entitlements of casual wealth, and the far loftier position of nobility with the huge respect that position engendered, remains a focus of interest in our present egalitarian society.

The series gives us glimpses and sometimes more, of little cruelties, perpetrated both by the servant class and those who lord it over them. Which the ennobling attitudes and rectitude of purpose and destiny, along with grand gestures and occasional compassion, balances. Duty pursued with distinction and sometimes with a crass underlay, is the motivating factor that runs throughout the series, reflected by both the upper class and the lower class.

It's a delusion to think that these distinctions between class and entitlements no longer exist, however; they are simply now, when we insist on believing that we are all equal, far less obvious. But there all the same; where the aristocratic were once seen as allied with royal positions, they now are identified by political, social and corporate power.

And the great numbers of those dependent upon the state and by its political, social and corporate movers, remain in the position of supplicants, job-seekers, people intent on making ends meet. They were the great unwashed then, and remain so now.