I remember a few rural Ontario uncles from my distant past - alas, no longer with us - who were just like Charlie. And there are a few older blokes in the small British Columbia town I now live in who are Charlie to the letter. They're actually a lot of fun to listen to, when they're shooting the breeze; easy to see…

You're correct about the names - sorry, it was late, and I was tired - but I've read in more than one place - largely books about the Marlborough 'circle' in the 1890s and thereabouts - that some of the American heiresses who snagged a titled husband and moved to England were appalled at how deadly dull the female…

Cora's relationship with Bricker - someone who respects her for her intelligence and liveliness - is a reminder that the American heiresses who came over to England in the late 1890s/early 1900s found themselves in a world that they didn't understand, and which didn't understand them. Jenny Rudolph and Consuela…

I disagree that it's a device you put on; if it was that, why would Mary be getting it, and not Tony? If it's a device you put in, as opposed to on, Bates wouldn't have a clue if Anna didn't tell him; so if he starts snooping around and finds Lady Mary's device, he might jump to the conclusion that this is why Anna…

The conveniently unnamed contraceptive device has to come into play (sorry) in a future episode. It's been - what - six years at least since Bates and Anna married; surely one of them must be wondering why there haven't been any little Bates's in that time. Anna, you've got some 'splaining to do. . . .

I really hope that someone offers the policeman sniffing around the interminable Bates/Anna/Green subplot a room at Downton; it would save everyone a lot of time and bother, since the fellow seems to be there every other day.

I'd read Dracula, Frankenstein, Jekyll and Hyde, and Dorian Gray by the time I was 16, have read Varney the Vampire, know more than is probably healthy about Gothic and horror literature - I've read the collected oeuvre of Ann Radcliffe, so there - and absolutely love it all. So I feel no guilt at all about loving Penn…

So Billie Piper is back, sort of? Whether the dodgy Oirish accent comes with her remains
to be seen. I can't help think of the final scene of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, where Glenne Headly introduces Steve Martin's character to the group of investors, and then - before he can say anything - forestalls him with…

Really pleased that Helen McCrory is going to have more to do in the second series. I figured she would, after the meeting between her and Sir Malcolm (in the gun shop) at the end of series one, but happy to have it confirmed.

Shouldn't Gillingham, as a gentleman, have provided the contraceptive device(s), rather than Mary? Rather ill-bred of him to place it on Mary's shoulders; and very uncaring of Mary to then foist it off on Anna.

My son - now 17, and a huge Supernatural fan - met Curtis at a Sherlockian conference he attended with his dad and me in Minneapolis in 2007. He was able to help Curtis with something silly - a button in the hotel elevator, I think - and they became friends, and after that every time we saw Curtis at the Baker Street…

He is a really nice, down-to-Earth guy. He's a keen Sherlockian - a member of the Baker Street Irregulars in New York, whose investiture was as 'An Actor, And a Rare One' - and I've been able to get to know him over the course of various Sherlockian events. Really easy to talk to, fun, interesting, and very smart.

And the show is produced by ITV, not the BBC.

I thought the line was (and this is going back well over two decades, since I last saw the film) 'I caught 'em - and I shot 'em - under rule three-oh-three.'

She's wonderful as Lucia in the recent three-part BBC adaptation of E.F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia (written by the League of Gentleman's Steve Pemberton, who co-stars as Georgie; Mark Gatiss is also in it). Chancellor is brilliantly waspish (and her costumes are gorgeous), while fans of Blackadder II will be thrilled…

At least Fellowes has remembered the Great War to the extent that (***mild spoiler***) the building of a War Memorial is a major plot point of the season.

Ah yes, the Christmas episode, when someone out-Spratts Spratt.

Servants were often a good deal more snobbish then their employers, especially where titled families were concerned. Titled employers were secure about their place in the world in a way that their servants were not; after all, a servant could be dismissed, and it would sting to go from being lady's maid to Countess…

I love the wonderful costumes, hairstyles, and make-up that allow the actors to look as if they all really have aged 12 years since series 1.

Remember how, in series 1, Molesley asked Bates if Anna was spoken for (at the garden party at the end of the series, when Robert announced that the war had started)? And how, even though Bates clearly had feelings for her, he'd never said anything to her? And how Bates lied to Molesley and said yes, she was spoken…