I cannot tell you how much time this has saved me.

He was really off my radar entirely until Downton Abbey. I saw Gosford Park when it came out—and enjoyed it very much—and then I bounced very hard off the second season of Downton, which I thought started very promisingly and then ran utterly off the rails. (derspatchel mainlined it last March and sent me a gloriously disappointed e-mail entitled "Welcome to Downton Abbey, where the foreshadowing flows as freely as the claret.") And everything I have read about him since has put me off further. Including, see above, his own words.