Partings, as we all know, are such sweet sorrow, even the ones that seem to go on forever. Over a dozen years, six series, 52 episodes, five specials, and two feature films that played at a theater near you, Downton Abbey looked backwards at a bygone England beating back early-20th-century modernity with all its empirical might. Julian Fellowes’ upstairs-downstairs drama was a hit from the beginning in its home country; after the show began airing on PBS in the U.S. in 2011, it became a phenomenon. The ongoing saga of the Crawleys and their battalion of servants caused viewers to swoon over a portrait of aristocratic rule in the “good old days” — y’know, back when strictly upheld class systems had class!

World wars, pandemics, nautical disasters, revolutions — not even death itself (R

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