Next Series Of Downton Abbey To Include Phone Voting
ITV bosses will build on the success of Downton Abbey by using public phone votes to decide who gets killed in the Great War.
What a blasted racket
The period drama has entranced viewers with its lavish costumes and accurate depictions of suffragettes talking about someone they knew on the Titanic, or old men being annoyed by motor cars.
The first series ended with a suffragette in a bonnet being upset about a war breaking out and now viewers will have the chance to vote for whether it is against Germany, France or Peru.
Meanwhile ITV2 will screen Behind Downton: The Xtra Abbey, with Fearne Cotton asking members of the cast what their favourite type of breeches are and how they would react if someone they knew was hit by an iceberg.
Series producer, Stephen Malley, said: “Brideshead Revisited would have been so much better if the viewers had been able to decide which character gets mounted by Anthony Andrews.”
But writer Julian Fellowes, eight-time winner of the Bafta for Man Who Cannot Possibly be Real, said: “One always has the most towering respect for the fact that one is creating for one’s audience, but the idea that my art will be sullied by the rampant, telephonic interference of the financially-ghastly makes one so furiously perturbed one could kick the head off a baby fox.”
Malley insisted: “By doing this we’re making the world’s most expensive version of a Choose Your Own Adventure book, but instead of turning to page 54 to enter the cave, people press 1 on their phones to see a former butler get shot in the trenches for cowardice.”
Casting has yet to be finalised, but according to insiders Simon Cowell will mentor the upstairs and Cheryl Cole the downstairs, while Louis Walsh will massage the horses.
