What would the dowager duchess make of it all? Downton Abbey returned with 9 million viewers to ITV1 but anyone hoping to watch it online were left disappointed after the broadcaster's ITV Player crashed. ITV blamed a "technical issue" with viewers hoping to watch Julian Fellowes's latest left with a trio of repeats on a loop. Not quite the same thing. "We worked hard to resolve these problems and the programme became available on ITV Player overnight," said an ITV spokeswoman. "As part of the ongoing project to fix our online technology, we will be rolling out a series of quality improvements in the coming weeks." Not before time, it would appear, and not before the on-demand service was given something of a roasting on Twitter. "Astonishingly poor compared to BBC!" said one. So what would the dowager duchess have made of it? We fear she probably wouldn't watch commercial television. Big iPlayer fan, though.
