The British Are ... Here!

Around my house, this holiday season has brought a British invasion. They've come after the kids as well as the grown-ups. And I have to say it: they're winning.

The most dangerous assault has come from Downton Abbey. Who'd've guessed? PBS; Masterpiece Theater; English manor dramas — it scarcely sends shivers. But Downton is saucy. Racy. And funny. And we're only three episodes in.

It's impossible to neglect, though, the flanking maneuver being mounted by Thomas and Friends. Yes, I know: trains. With faces. From Britain. Ghastly. But Thomas has overrun our three year old and shown no mercy in the triumph. I doesn't help that the digital facelift given to these lethargic storylines turns out to be pretty stellar. I cringe when I hear all the talk of usefulness, but the glossed-up, high-color renderings of trains and bridges and forests and countrysides are lovely when compared to the cartoons of my own youth.

In our defeat we're hardly alone. If anything we are, in both cases, late to succumb. Downton is a hit. And Thomas has been charming post-toddlers, and costing their parents fortunes in the process, since the middle of the last century. The animations may have improved, but the stolid trains and their drive to be "really useful" are as worn and loved as a favorite stuffed doll.

Nor is that the end of it. Anglophilia is soaring, from Will & Kate nuptials — more American viewers than Charles and Diana — and their post-facto intrigues (did Pippa steal the show? Was Grace passing judgment, or just sleepy?) to The Iron Lady and, of all things, Thatcherstalgia. Rule Britania, indeed. We are having a national moment.

I'd like to think Britishness as such is incidental to these victories. But I'm not sure that's the case. In fact, it — Britishness — may be crucial. Why?

One possibility: the collapse of empire. America has entered its period of long, slow, irreversible decline. Who better to serve as our guide? The Brits suffered the disintegration of the greatest empire the world's ever known, and they did it in recent memory — within a generation or two, if you stretch. What's more, they did it — arguably, and as long as you're not Indian — with class. Stiff upper lip, honor of family: we have much to learn from these people who let fortune and cultural dominance slide from their grasp with neither communist whimper nor fascist convulsion. And they remain a powerhouse of the global economy and one of the most formidably expensive places on the face of the earth, no small consolation to New Yorkers who fear losing their position in the pecking order of financial suffering.

But there's more. The message of Downton is that the great ebb offers randiness and prickly sarcasm as well as luxury. It's a swell decline. The ladies are willing, upstairs and down; the men are rakes and charlies. Or, when they're not, they're decent sorts, or interestingly cruel at a minimum. It's Britain's 1% taking on its 99%, with costumes and manners.

Thomas, on the other hand, is all about comfort. What could manifest the holiday season more aptly than trains — especially trains that aim to please?

Worker pride is the crux of Thomas and Friends. There's no higher praise than to be called "really useful," and it's this toward which all engines strive. Pronouncement of utility — or lack thereof — falls to the ubiquitous "Sir Topham Hat," who runs the railroads of Sodor, the imaginary island on which the trains operate. (Each episode begins with a poetic paean to Sodor, almost like an anthem: praises for its rivers and streams, its mountains, and of course its well-tended railways.) Duty and honor are prized. But there's also plenty of room for forgiveness. Sir Topham Hat may be grouchy, but he's also benevolent, ready to overlook near-constant slipups by his workforce. Each storyline seems to involve one or more of the engines becoming so enraptured by good but misguided intentions that he threatens the entire business. Contrition follows, then absolution, then heroic efforts that "set things right." The final blessing — that all's well, everyone's turned out to be "really useful" after all — brings down the curtain of comfort and order.

We're mixed up. Maybe that's what it means. We can't let go of our voyeurism — our desire to see, to walk among the 1%, imagine the unimaginable opulence of their days. But we need to sense that it's crumbling, too. We want to feel the winds of change ripping through the drawing rooms as surely as they do the basement laundries and kitchens — which is to say, the places we'd most likely find our own selves in.

Class imprisons the Brits. Mostly, it only confuses their American cousins. On the one hand we hate it. On the other we're conditioned to believe it's accessible — that we can achieve it; and we hate the notion that by the time our own personal turn rolls around there'll be nothing left to get excited about. What's the point in striving if there's no promised land for the arriving?

What Americans are not confused by — at least not yet — is the honor of work. Perhaps this is Thomas's secret. Like the trains of Sodor — or like the denizens of the Downton servants' quarters — we don't mind working for someone. In fact, we long for it, now more than ever. We just want our work to be recognized. And valued.

Which is to say: we don't mind there being a 1%. We just want that 1% to care.

And, of course, to gracefully wither away.