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A lot of writers, noting creator Julian Fellowes’ lifelong monarchist Tory politics, have argued that the show is the most conservative drama on television. Emma Brockes of The Guardian notes that “Tom the chauffeur had his Irish nationalist phase, which one understands to have been rather silly of him. The show favors a brand of Conservative paternalism embodied by Lord Grantham, who is a good man, and Mary, who, let’s face it, is a proto-Thatcherite.” Fellowes himself told the Guardian, ”At the risk of sounding sentimental, I believe the monarchy stands for a fairness that we like to think represents us. I hope ‘Downton’ has that kind of decency about it.”

Yet many of the same critics note that a large portion of its audience has identified itself with liberal. Though there’s no simple explanation connecting the show’s politics to its appeal, some have attempted to rationalize this discrepancy. For example, the show spend as much time on the servants as the upper-class family, and according to Bruce Covert, editor of the Roosevelt Institute’s New Deal 2.0 blog, “the rigid class structure is clearly oppressive for everyone involved. It’s not just the servants who suffer from it, but Lady Mary, Matthew and everyone caught up in the entail.”