Downton Abbey slammed as 'f*****g atrocious' by Parade's End star Benedict Cumberbatch

Benedict Cumberbatch thinks 'Downton Abbey's second season was "f*****g atrocious" and says that his new five-part BBC drama is "so much more sophisticated".

The 36-year-old actor claims his new BBC drama 'Parade's End' is better than the ITV1 period drama at portraying real feeling and nostalgia.

Benedict told Reader's Digest: "We're remembering that there was a world before the First World War.

"We're having a culture now that's revering, or having a nostalgia trip with, the beginning of the 1900s.

"Although 'Downton' traded a lot of the sentiment in the last series... but we won't talk about that series because it was, in my opinion, f*****g atrocious."

Benedict stars as government tactician Christopher Tietjens, who is trapped in a loveless marriage until his world is turned upside down when he's called to war in the five-part drama.

The 'Sherlock' actor worried about making yet another period drama about pre-war Britain, but thinks the result is "so much more sophisticated" than other cliched attempts.

He said: "There was that fear, yes. I thought, are we pandering to a taste? But this is so much more sophisticated, so much more unusual.

"You rarely see a piece about this class of people that's this accurate, funny and pointed.

"We're not making some cliched comment, 'Oh isn't it awful the way there's this upstairs/downstairs divide?'

"This is about class and love, an elegy to a dying era. It's the final mad waltz of Edwardian society into this war-game idiocy."

'Parade's End' is on BBC Two this August.

Read the full article in the September issue of Reader's Digest, in shops 21st August.