Fellowes apologises for criticising Downton Abbey viewers

Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes has admitted that he should not have got “the hump” when viewers pointed out a string of historical inaccuracies in the hit period drama.

A second series of the show hits UK television screens this weekend, starring Hugh Bonneville and Dame Maggie Smith, after the first became a ratings hit, attracting 11 million viewers for the final episode.

But viewers spotted apparent anachronisms – such as the use of the word “boyfriend”, a TV aerial fixed to a home, a modern-style conservatory and double yellow lines on a road – in the first series.

Fellowes, 62, the series’ writer and executive producer, had lashed out at those highlighting the inaccuracies, saying: “The real problem is with people who are insecure socially.”

He added: “They think to show how smart they are by picking holes in the programme to promote their own poshness and to show that their knowledge is greater than your knowledge.”

Now he has told the Radio Times that it was “sloppy” to have let the TV aerial slip into the show. He said that he specified that the aerial should be removed from the shot “but somehow it fell through the system, which was sloppy, and I was annoyed about that”.

But the Oscar-winnersaid complainants were not always correct, citing the use of the word “boyfriend”, which he says was in print in 1889, so would have been in speech before that.

However, he added: “But I thought I behaved rather badly by getting the hump.”

The first series – since sold to more than 100 countries – had the biggest ratings of any ITV costume drama since Brideshead Revisited in 1981.