"But by following the same late Edwardian aristocratic caste through the First World War and into the 1920s, could Parade’s End be fairly dubbed “a thinking person’s Downton Abbey”? “I guess that’s a crude label for it,” says Cumberbatch. “Not to denigrate what you’re saying, but any comparisons are a danger.” However, without naming names, he later says that Parade’s End won’t be “some crappy, easily digestible milk-chocolate on a Sunday evening… it’s going to be hard work, but it will pay dividends if you stick with it”."