Ellen Gray: Addictive British soap 'Downton Abbey' returns for 2nd season

* MASTERPIECE CLASSIC: DOWNTON ABBEY, SERIES II. 9 p.m. Sunday, WHYY 12.

I HAVEN'T slept well lately, having spent a good chunk of the holidays watching the second season of "Downton Abbey," only to discover that those fiends at PBS' "Masterpiece Classic" had withheld the Feb. 19 finale from critics, leaving us as much in the dark as our readers about the fates of some of the addictive soap's most compelling characters.

(Yes, I know, it aired in Britain over Christmas, but I'm not going to peek. And neither should you.)

It's weird, honestly, to be waking up from dreams of "Downton," considering that when I'm awake, I'm at least mildly critical of the second coming of a show that was originally intended to be only a miniseries. But then, as "Masterpiece" executive producer Rebecca Eaton noted last summer, it "was broadcast here [in the U.S.] in January to 13 million people, a million of whom saw it online, [and] has gone on to win awards and not receive one bad review ever from anyone."

Indeed, the worst thing I could think of to say about the original "Downton Abbey" was that it sometimes felt as if it "had been custom-designed for those of us for whom period romance is mother's milk, studded as it is with plucky heroines, accidental heirs and scheming dowagers, with just enough history thrown in to make the melodrama seem highbrow."

I thought it "delicious fun" then, and I still do, though strung over a longer period - and against the unfun background of the First World War - the second series, as they call it in Britain, shows signs of strain, as creator Julian Fellowes throws one obstacle after another between his sets of star-crossed lovers (some upstairs, some down).

The good news is that the indomitable Maggie Smith is back as the dowager countess, who not only gets all the best lines, but also knows what to do with them.

"I hate Greek drama, where everything happens offstage," she says at one point, as if putting her finger squarely on the very un-Greek appeal of "Downton," which seldom shuts out its audience.

But if you howled, as I did, at the not-exactly-happy ending to last winter's tale, you may also be counting the hours until Sunday's return.

"An unresolved story line will stay with you perhaps longer than one with some sort of neat, satisfactory resolution, you know," Dan Stevens said in an interview last summer in Beverly Hills.