“Downton Abbey,” 9 tonight, PBS.
There are now many reasons to watch surprise mega-hit “Downton Abbey,” which begins its third season on PBS tonight. But before the first episode aired, there was really only one: Maggie Smith.
Some critics and public broadcasting aficionados may have claimed allegiance to creator Julian Fellowes, the actor-turned-writer who had worked with Robert Altman to give us “Gosford Park,” or even a nostalgic delight at the return of Elizabeth McGovern. But if we are truly honest with ourselves, the main reason for all the early anticipation and adulation was Smith, a performer of such consistent, elastic and unique fabulousness that, well into her eighth decade, she’s practically become her own genre.
Querulous class-sensitive companion? Autocratic aunt? Snobby but possibly sensible duchess/countess/queen? Over the years, Smith has played the dithering and the withering, the brilliant and the mundane. She has Oscars for her unconventional schoolteacher (“The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie”), and wry and brittle movie star (“California Suite”) and more Emmy and British academy awards than is possibly seemly.
In recent years, she has specialized in sharp-tongued, perpetually appraising women whose implacable gaze and scathingly insightful retorts shield, one suspects, a heart broken young. Even before she began playing the redoubtable Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter series, she could freeze a room with a look, orate in a perfectly timed silence, break your heart by simply squaring her shoulders or settling her shawl.