Whoever came up with the idea of reinventing Downton Abbey (Sunday, ITV1) as a comedy is to be congratulated. It was a brave thing to do because the safe option would have been to stick with the "drama" format - it having proved such a winner in series one and two. What I liked about this new parodic approach was its subtlety: the knowing use of terms which have a contemporary resonance, such as "evil twin," or the way it used cliché to subvert the genre of drama - "have you swallowed a dictionary?" one character woodenly asks another. There were times, though, when it was in danger of becoming too nuanced, with the dialogue almost slipping into realism. But then writer Julian Fellowes would deftly pull it back with a line such as: "I say, what the devil?" The only time I thought the parody went too far was when Carson the butler said: "Miss O'Brien, we are about to host a society wedding. I have no time to train this young hobbledehoy. As with the hammy Yorkshire accents, less can be more. On the subject of O'Brien, a comedy icon up there with Edmund Blackadder or Del Boy Trotter, I thought she was underused. Perhaps the fear was that she would distract from the big comedy set piece, which was a scene in which Lord Grantham and his accountant engaged in some truly gear-crunching dialogue, every line of which was crammed with plot information. It was like watching two people trying to stuff an inflated balloon into a matchbox. What joy. That scene introduced the plot twist for the new series, that the Downton money had run out. Ten out of 10 for topicality, but wasn't escapism supposed to be the appeal of the previous two series? Perhaps it doesn't matter because this one seems to be aimed at our American cousins - hence Shirley MacLaine - and they are on the road to economic recovery over there. The question is, will they get the irony? Aren't they supposed to have a blind spot for that sort of thing? Another niggle: they have kept that evocative theme tune from series one and two - and it doesn't reflect the new comic mood of series three. They have also kept the Maggie Smith character, which I think is a mistake. In the first series, when Downton Abbey was still a drama, her role as comic relief made sense, now she seems redundant.