I always get annoyed by assumptions that all viewers are lowbrow fools who have the attention span of a gnat. I would have thought they would not be interested in period drama in the first place. Or am I being condescending. Did they sit through Titanic I wonder?

Yes you have the only point that matters for the plot in your grasp. Genius. I tried to watch it ignoring the entailment scenes and some of them would be missable, but others were in the middle of something else and Lady Mary's troubles wou;d be difficult to understand I think. Mrs Crawley will look like a grasping idiot. I would give the first episode a go. The servants are great. And at least there are no commercials in your version. ITV had them every 15 minutes.

Edited because lj went crackerdog