Julian Fellowes' Epix limited series Belgravia is everything you want it to be, but not one bit more

The Washington Post

The Downton Abbey creator's six-episode British period drama is "a pedigreed, crunchy-gravel story with all the trimmings and light melodramas, set in London’s most affluent neighborhood in 1841, where an old family secret is just dying to get out," says Hank Stuever. "The viewers are in on this secret almost from the beginning, which turns the series into a protracted exercise of hurry-up-and-wait, to see if things turn out all right. The real tension in Belgravia (premiering Sunday on premium cable channel Epix) is attuned to class and status, as it usually is in Fellowes’s work."

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• Don't expect the next Downton Abbey: "Like the later seasons of Downton, the storytelling is so overt and relentlessly obvious that it causes the show to drag and characters to become cartoonish," says Ann Donahue, adding: "Will all this be disappointing for those looking for Downton Abbey 2.0? A bit. One of the chief selling points of Downton’s early seasons was how it tread the fine line between soap opera and prestige drama. Belgravia errs on the wrong side of that divide, but it is so well-appointed that it is never less than beautiful to watch, just like Downton. For some, the finery will win out over refinement."
• If you can tolerate period dialogue peppered with modern idioms, you'll find a zippy and engaging soap in Belgravia