'Downton Abbey:' Third season review

As you may be aware, "Downton Abbey" wraps its third season Sunday night. And do not worry, a fourth is coming (I'm assuming this fall.). Here's my review in tomorrow's paper .?.?.

But this "Christmas Special" does manage to be both a gift and a sweeping thematic expression of what "Downton" has been about all season. The third has tracked shifting fortunes — power gained, power lost and the fragility of human dignity — but the press of time is accelerating too.

Roles are changing, particularly gender roles, and Robert remains resolutely stuck in an Edwardian past. Or as Cora Crawley, Countess of Grantham (Elizabeth McGovern) observed last week, “Poor Robert. The postwar world is not being kind to him."

The Crawleys don't know it — we do — but another war looms, which will further erode the bedrock of England, or at least their England. Children are representative of that new world too but they've been particularly hard to come by here — an heir finally born to Sybil (Jessica Brown Findlay) who dies in childbirth. This may well be series’ creator Julian Fellowes way of saying just how tenuous that future is.

Sunday night  (be warned) has a hard conclusion, but what you’ll finally be left of this luminous season is an even deeper affection — and appreciation — for this treasure.