Byline: PHOTOGRAPH BY SIMON UPTON

The Most Happy Fellowes

Behind Downton Abbey, the British series enthralling viewers on both sides of the Atlantic, is the world as imagined by Julian Fellowes: wistful, sharp-eyed outsider and dyed-in-the-wool aristocratic observer. Visiting the show's creatoras well as its "belowstairs" set and its upstairs, Highclere CastleDAVID KAMP learns how Fellowes found his calling, why there's been a Downton Abbey backlash in the U.K., and where the Crawleys and company are (or aren't) headed in Season Three

To go "belowstairs" at Downton Abbey, one doesn't actually descend any stairs, but, rather, enters into a drafty, warehouse-like building at Ealing Studios, in West London. This is where many of the interior scenes for Downton Abbey, the TV show, are filmed. On an afternoon last spring, the set in use was the servants' hall. Gathered at a long, plain dining table familiar to viewers of the series were the dastardly footman Thomas, the glowering lady's maid O'Brien, the saintly head housemaid Anna, and assorted lesser drudges in the employ of the Crawley family. They were talking over teadecompressing after a particularly trying day in 1920. But a room away, watching on a monitor, Julian Fellowes spotted something amiss.

"Liz," he said, addressing Liz Trubridge, one of the show's producers, "we've got to get the glasses of water off the table. They're having tea. They wouldn't have water there. A glass of water is a modern thing." The water glasses were removed, and the scene, now more period-authentic, resumed shooting.

But, honestly, would it have made much difference? Who, besides Fellowes and a few monocled relics attuned to the same I-say-old-bean frequency, would even pick up on the anachronism of water glasses in interwar Britain?

The answer doesn't really matter. Fellowes, as the creator, co-executive producer, and writer of Downton Abbey, has earned the right to be particular. His show, now in its third season, is a smash hit in its native Britain and a godsend to public television in America, where it has delivered PBS's Masterpiece program its largest-ever viewership. (Season Three began airing in the U.K. in September and will start here on January 6.) It could be argued, in fact, that Fellowes's particularity is the very thing that has propelled the Downton phenomenon. Right from the opening credits, in which an unseen servant wands a cylindrical feather duster over the crystals of a chandelier and a butler holds a ruler above a place setting to ensure that the flatware is spaced properly, we are whisked into a world that is distinctly based upon the sanctity of the done thing.

Correspondingly, much of the drama of Downton Abbey hinges upon the grave consequences of the mis-done thing. If a raspberry-meringue pudding goes wrongmistakenly finished with a sprinkle of salt rather than sugarthen the dinner guests must retch terribly and the cook must be sent down to London for risky cataract surgery. If the eldest and most eligible daughter in the house has a spontaneous fling with...