Deeply repressed Edwardian gentry and their servants suffer through romance and intrigue in a British costume drama on a channel where the median viewing age is 62. It doesn’t sound like a recipe for success, but Masterpiece Theater’s “Downton Abbey” has become a runaway hit for PBS.

Celebrities obsessively tweet about the show while memes like “Sh*t the Dowager-Countess Says” flurry around the internet. With such devoted followers, “Downton Abbey” rose to become the number-two-watched show in its slot on Super Bowl Sunday.

But how did such a staid program like “Downton Abbey” suddenly become hip and current?

The show has everything you would want in a 1910s-period soap opera: gripping performances, sly historical references, lavish costumes and beautiful sets. The story follows the aristocratic Grantham family, owners of Downton Abbey, in their quest for an heir. While the Grantham daughters court and lose suitors upstairs, the servants search for happiness or vie for positions downstairs.

Yet it’s remarkable that, in the 21st century, American audiences are drawn to an often idyllic picture of rigidly class-bound life. Lord Grantham gives heartfelt speeches about his duty to the manor while demonstrating paternalistic care to his social inferiors. We are asked to sympathize with a man who lumps Karl Marx with classical liberal J.S. Mill as newfangled radicals.

It’s true that the show welcomes the advent of women’s suffrage and hints at class conflict in the form of the socialist chauffeur, Tom Branson, but these tensions are muted compared to the warmth and glamour of the British nobility. There’s nothing like the scathing criticism of “Mad Men” here: The old elites appear as fundamentally decent people.

Part of this is just conservative nostalgia. As RuPaul (of all people) explained to the Daily Beast, the show has arrived at a moment when our “cultural protocol and etiquette” are in peril: “That’s why it’s so interesting to watch ‘Downton Abbey,’ because these people know their place and they thrive in their place.”

I would argue, though, that beneath this longing for lost deference and decorum is a deeper anxiety about the present moment.

“Downton Abbey” premiered in the UK just as Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron began a series of government budget cuts that, as he claimed, would change Britain’s “whole way of life.” In the depths of a recession, Cameron slashed welfare programs and child benefits in what the Labour party called a “massive assault on families.” Not long after, the UK saw student uprisings against Parliament’s vote to triple university tuition.

In America, we’ve long become accustomed to austerity measures and attacks on the poor, but class warfare reached a greater pitch with the long recession.

With “Downton Abbey,” however, we see a very different picture of the ruling class. As the series progresses, we see the Granthams provide healthcare to sick employees and make accommodations for workers with disabilities. The house gives charity to wounded veterans and even offers child support to a disgraced former servant.

Above all, though, the estate gives permanent employment to workers without many other prospects, even if it is carrying out pointless and unprofitable tasks like dressing the lords and ladies.

In a time of temp work, ruthless efficiency and the fraying of the social safety net, a television program that depicts the top one percent treating its underlings with loyalty and abiding respect helps fulfill our frustrated utopian wishes. It provides imaginary compensation, or what Fredric Jameson would call a “fantasy bribe,” for the misery and uncertainty of late capitalism.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the camera dwells upon the sumptuous architecture and comforts of the Grantham manor. When families are being thrown out of their houses for unpaid mortgages, the notion that the home might be a lasting legacy to be passed down to one’s children becomes a pleasant dream of the past.

Thus, as the series continues, we watch with sadness as the Great War deals another blow to the declining aristocracy — an allegory of our failing hopes for the welfare state.

Of course, we cannot and should not return to the bad old days. But the strict hierarchy involved in “knowing one’s place” is a picture of relief when capitalism destroys all fixed social bonds. Somehow, when offered the stability and human concern of this old world, we forget for a moment the authoritarianism and obscene wealth that the upper class represents.

JORDAN S. CARROLL, who finds e-mail like something out of an H.G. Wells novel, can be reached at jscarroll@ucdavis.edu.

Last week, Rajiv Narayan wrote to encourage civic education and involvement. Amen! Certainly doing something about the outrageous cost of public education is a top priority. But before there was Occupy and before anyone on campus knew what it felt like to be pepper sprayed, a crisis had brewed up within Intercollegiate Athletics (ICA).

After illegitimately dropping four teams in 2010 on grounds of “fiscal sustainability” (never mind that it’s you who fund Athletics, not the state), in 2011 the chancellor started pushing “excellence” instead — and the notion of going “Big Time” with Aggie sports. If only she could get rid of those pesky Core Principles.

So she hired former NCAA President Cedric Dempsey to tell her how. Well, what the 2011 UC Davis Athletics Strategic Audit (aka “The Dempsey Report”) made clear, what the vast majority of the speakers at the town hall meetings pointed out, and what ultimately even the chancellor’s hand-picked recruitment committee agreed, was that the chancellor’s grand idea was not such a good one. Furthermore, it became painfully obvious that ICA’s leadership has managed to lose its way.

Just before all hell broke loose on the Quad last November, the Academic Senate commissioned a “Special Committee on Athletics.” Why do you suppose they did that? The committee’s findings are expected to be available shortly, and not just to the chancellor. Whatever this committee has to say should be required reading for everyone who cares about the integrity of Athletics at UC Davis — especially those who pay for it.

So what can you do? For starters, don’t wait for the very same officials who brought about the systemic problems within ICA to fix them. Likewise, don’t expect a brand new athletic director to come in, wave a “do the right thing” wand and solve everything either. Instead, ASUCD needs to step up and defend its own interests. For instance:

Individually learn and institutionally remember why ASUCD provides ICA with over $16 million annually through the SASI, FACE and CEI initiatives. Publicize the Core Principles of Intercollegiate Athletics and educate fellow students about the Davis Way and the teacher/coach model. They should be viewed as a deep source of Aggie Pride.

Establish meaningful ASUCD oversight of ICA and demand full transparency and accountability by the university. If the administration offers only advisory committees, then send it only advisory dollars. Do not accept the role of silent funding partner any longer.

Demand that the university respects and abides by UC Davis’ own Core Principles of Intercollegiate Athletics. They’re not “more like guidelines,” they’re contractual terms.

Identify ways to reduce excessive ICA administration costs and see that emphasis is placed instead on student-athlete welfare. This was not done as promised in 2010 and will clearly never happen on its own. ICA admin costs remain double those of Cal Poly and Sac State.

Insist that the diverse athletic participation opportunities associated with Women’s Rowing and Men’s Swimming/Diving and Wrestling be fully restored.

Evaluate different funding models for maximum sustainability for all sports. Consider mandating that all SASI, FACE and CEI funding be distributed to teams on an equal per-student-athlete basis (adjusting for Title IX compliance). Let those sports which cannot remain competitive at this level of secure funding be responsible for reducing costs (through roster management, minimizing travel expenses, changing conference affiliation, etc.) and/or compete for less secure funding.

Then, when ICA has found its way once again, spread the word far and wide. Many will be very glad to hear it.

I thought this country was effectively over being assholes to Native Americans after we finally recognized American Indians as actual humans, not just rugged peoples that liked cloth underwear, with the 1968 Indian Civil Rights Act. Neglect, however, continues throughout the 21st century just as chronically as increasing rates of crime on American Indian reservations.

The amount of violence found within the country’s 310 American Indian reservations are two and a half times the national average, according to data compiled by the Justice Department. American Indian women are 10 times as likely to be murdered than are other Americans, and they are raped or sexually assaulted at a rate four times the country’s average.

These jarring statistics don’t seem to faze our judicial system, though. Where there are high rates of reservation crime, there are, by contrast, low rates of prosecutions for these offenses by United States attorneys.

The government did not pursue 65 percent of rape charges on reservations and rejected 61 percent of cases involving sexual abuse of children. Prosecutors’ main reason for turning down these investigations is a lack of admissible evidence.

Mark Twain once said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” Well, I can say for a fact that America is presently using its thesaurus to write a limerick we’ve already heard.

John Gast’s now-famous painting “American progress” pictorially represents the United States’ westward expansion in the late 19th century. Its foreground is a large, female angel concealing the horrific background that is Native Americans and animals fleeing in terror of settlers. This allegorical representation of modernizing the new west is meant to explain that not only was expansion wise (the angel holds a school book and strings along a telegraph), but also apparent (manifest) and inevitable (destiny).

The theme of the time period seemed to be that Native Americans were merely collateral damage to the greater story of American history. So if the price America had to pay for progress then was human life, is that not the same cost we face today? And if so, what does this country hope to gain from now neglecting, not just abusing, Native Americans?

 When our government gets the finger, it tends to point the finger right back at some piece of legislation it passed. “See, look!” it says, tugging at the accuser’s pant leg. “Congress approved the Trial Law and Order Act in 2010. Surely the tribal law enforcement systems will start working soon enough!”

The same scene played out in 1887 when President Cleveland gestured to the Dawes Act. His seemingly generous offer to divide American Indian tribal land into allotments for individual Native Americans actually allowed non-Indians and railroad developers to scoop up acres for pennies on the dollar. Where Native Americans owned 138 million acres in 1887, they claimed 48 million in 1934.

These blame games will lead, and have led, to a human knot of tied tongues and tangled, bloodied hands.

Our country has issues with the War on Terror lasting seven years. Let’s just take a moment to think about the American Indian Wars between 1622-1923. I don’t even pay taxes yet, but I cannot imagine helping finance a 301-year war.

I do, however, concede that if I were an American living in the 19th century, I too would have been threatened. But I do not understand what 21st century Americans, and especially our judicial members, are so afraid of today. American Indians’ 2.3 percent stake, 55.7 million acres, of U.S. land? Their disgustingly harsh reservation laws?

If that’s the case, listen up, prosecutors. You should manage comfortably with 97.7 percent of this country’s area. (Otherwise, I hear we’re working on colonizing the extraterrestrial world.) And you should be able to fall fast asleep at night knowing our laws are much more lenient than Native Americans’, if only because public officials are intimidated by a group that once terrified our ancestors.

Suck it up and please do your job.

If you think CHELSEA MEHRA knows a thing or two about history, contact her at cmehra@ucdavis.edu so she can forward your thoughts to her TA.