Jayne Dowle: A storm in a bonnet as history comes to life

There was a debate raging about history on television, and the academic was arguing that this erudite subject was being cheapened by – and I recall it more or less verbatim – “presenters dressing up in bonnets and climbing in and out of carriages”.

If you think teenage girls are bitchy, you know nothing of academics. I clicked immediately who this waspish don was referring to, it was that Dr Lucy Worsley, her with the blonde bob and the nice coats, who recently presented a series on the Regency period for the BBC.

You can see why others might be envious of Dr Worsley. She has an engaging way, and a fascination with all that is domestic and mundane. In a previous series, it was from her that I learnt that our medieval ancestors didn’t retire to bed to sleep through til dawn when the sun went down. They got up in the middle of the night to eat, talk and er, entertain themselves, before snuggling back under the goose-feathers.

Dr Worsley demonstrated this by making up a full-scale medieval bed and climbing into it. That’s the kind of thing she does. Good for her. My kids were fascinated.

Her adversary was calling for more serious debating of historical issues on television instead of this bonnet power approach. Out with the costume drama and in with a televised seminar? I do hope not. I struggle to keep awake during Newsnight as it is. I don’t want to spend my precious leisure hours desperately hunting for something worth watching on TV, only to end up staring at three talking heads having a heated debate about the Corn Laws.

I’d much rather watch Downton Abbey. That’s the point, you see. History doesn’t have to be boring. And why should it have to have strict criteria? Surely, it doesn’t matter how we learn about the past, as long as the process engages and informs us. Personally, I can’t fault the eminent historian, Simon Schama, but his genial prof act grates with some.

My husband skits at that Scottish historian with the ponytail for his ubiquity, but I could listen to him lilting about the landscape all night.

It is wrong to be reductionist about this, to say that costume drama is wrong, and only serious intellectual debate is right. In an ideal world, there would be room for both. But there isn’t. History has to fight its schedule corner like anything else.

The specialist satellite history channels are seemingly dedicated to re-runs of Who Do You Think You Are? and documentaries about Hitler.

So we can’t afford to start being picky. And I speak as one who was sniffy about the gentle Sunday night series Lark Rise to Candleford until I realised that it was a perfect way to learn about how agricultural communities faced the oncoming rush of the 20th century.

Yes, I know. I am sad. I am that person who Sky-pluses programmes about the Vikings to watch over and again. But the nine million-plus people who watch ITV1’s costume drama, fondly known as “Downton” can’t all be geeks like me.

Downton is the televisual equivalent of taking a spoonful of sugar with your medicine. You don’t notice it’s doing you good until you have swallowed it. And there is always something to learn with this one.

I know now, thanks to last Sunday’s instalment, that in the grandest houses, it was considered bad form for female servants to wait on in the dining room – that was the kind of thing you expected to find in the “home of a chartered surveyor”, apparently.

I love it. The success of this second series, now hurtling now through the First World War, is down to the fact that it is unashamedly, slavishly, devoted to showing us how we used to live.

We watch it and wonder. Which one would you have been? I know that my rightful place would have been as Daisy the kitchen maid, because my own grandma went into service scrubbing pans when she was a girl, but I fancy myself as Lady Sybil, the headstrong youngest daughter of the house, sure to end up falling in love with the rebellious Irish chauffeur.

If you – and that frosty academic – want proof of bonnet power, consider this. The millions of viewers Downton Abbey pulls in. The reverence in which its creator, Julian Fellowes, is held. The Emmys it has won. The fact that the BBC put out not only Spooks but a new Stephen Fry programme to try and break the spellbound hold it has over the nation. The adverts it attracts in its commercial breaks. Well, perhaps not the adverts. There were 23 minutes of commercials across its 90-minute slot last Sunday night. And let me tell you, there is nothing worse than being brought startlingly back to the present by someone trying to flog you insurance – except perhaps three talking heads having a heated debate about the Corn Laws in the name of entertainment.