Ring for Tea: A Casual Downton Abbey Podcast

I had never watched Downton Abbey until now. I was looking for a podcast to listen to as I was watching and decided on this one. It really has the feel of talking with girlfriends about what you just watched on tv. It’s casual like the title of the podcast says. It’s not super analytical or deep but fun as entertaining. I do understand some of the fellow reviewers frustration over important details being missed. Those lapses did not keep me from enjoying the podcast though.

ETA: Pro tip, don’t eat and talk into a microphone with food in your mouth. ——— I watched the series well after it aired so never had the opportunity to talk about it “over the water cooler.” I appreciate the discussion by other non-fanatical viewers who have different interpretations or noticed things I missed. For example, it never occurred to me that Mrs. Patmore was directing the Ouija board messages to Daisy. This podcast is a nice companion piece to people who watched DA alone.

The “expert” on the show seems like she is not even watching the show. She’s not helpful in clarifying questions. I had to stop in episode 2 when she started eating during the recoding and was simply responding with her mouth full, “mmm hmmm.” She keeps going off topic on other shows which she is clearly more interested in. I also had a hard time with their own elitism about their jobs and titles, followed directly by a vitriolic indictment of the elitism which was normal for the period of the show. I can’t. I’m done.

Unfortunately, these ladies don’t know much about either Downton Abbey or the historical time it was set in. Even the one who claims to have seen the show multiple times gets most things wrong. They completely lost me when they said the Dowager (who they could barely identify) does not do anything “because she is a WOMAN.” How little they know of history before the year of their own births. Just skip this one.