Downton Time

The Christmas ornaments are packed away. The tree is awaiting pickup by the street. The last fir needle is (I think) vacuumed off the floor.

All of which means ... it's Downton time. Or at least it used to be.

The urge to watch "Downton Abbey" had been growing in me for days. The U.S. airing of that show on PBS's "Masterpiece Theater" was always perfectly timed, I thought. It would begin here the first full weekend after the holidays, and was a perfect respite to the post-Christmas letdown.

No need to mourn it, though, not in the age of streaming. Last night, I settled down in the beanbag chair to watch Downton all over again, courtesy of Amazon Prime.

What a sight it was was after two years away—and eight years since the first episode: the opulence and the intrigue, the dresses and the jewelry, the upstairs and the downstairs. Seeing it again means I savor the details with full knowledge of what comes afterward: Lord Grantham's generosity, Anna's kindness to Bates.

It wasn't until I glanced at the clock on the VCR player that it dawned on me what I'd done. It was 9 p.m. Without meaning to I was watching the show at exactly the same hour it always aired. As Downton often reminds us: Old habits die hard.