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A letter arrives. Widespread panic passes through the house. The news is grave: James Crawley, the presumed heir to the estate, and his son, Patrick, died on the RMS Titanic. Matthew, a distant third cousin, soon arrives and learns that he will inherit the manor.
And so begins “Downton Abbey” — with the sinking of the Titanic, and how that disrupts social order and restructures an entire family’s plans for the future.
It’s also a brief window into the magnitude of the show. Right off the bat, the show hits viewers with one of the most famous moments in modern history. And it’s an event Americans — an audience that has since become captivated with the British period drama — can easily relate to and understand.
[To read the full story go to Deseret.com](<http://www.ksl.com/ad_logger/ad_logger.php?location=https://www.deseret.com/entertainment/2019/9/21/20872303/downton-abbey-movie-highclere-castle-special-maggie-smith-crawley&sponsor=Fashion, values and the human condition: Why Americans care about ‘Downton Abbey’>).
