One of the hallmarks of the show is the leisurely way in which it allows itself the time to set its big moments up just so, usually to give themselves the chance to wreck our hopes and dreams as comprehensively as possible.
And Dickens showed how bleak a house can become if it allows itself to be consumed by a lawsuit.
It allows itself a touch of blues or modern gospel only in songs of tribulation and redemption but still rouses audiences with its fervor.
Once a great metropolis, it allowed itself to be swallowed by New York City in 1898, a capitulation some still call the "Great Mistake"; it lost its major daily newspaper and baseball team in the 1950s.
American power, currently reviled around the world, is an inescapable fact, and when it allows itself to be harnessed to the wishes and interests of other nations, especially democratic ones, it can be a constructive force and win wider acceptance.
More compelling than Susan Hill's moody sequel Mrs de Winter (wife #2), because it allows itself to follow the more interesting character, Rebecca herself: primary colour set against pastel.
Mr Umunna said the right of the party also needed to acknowledge that one of the "huge weaknesses of New Labour" was that it "allowed itself to be characterised as an elite project with wide popular support but it did not build a base for its support within the party across the country or develop leaders from the communities it represented".
The core of the BBC's Brexit referendum failing was that it allowed itself to be taken for a ride in allowing the £350m a week lie to be presented as a matter of opinion and given credence by continuous repetition.
Instead of showing statesmanship and leadership and rallying the Syrian people, of all sects and ethnic backgrounds, behind a programme of democratic transformation, it allowed itself to be led by Islamist hardliners into a narrowly defined agenda that alienated many secular-minded Syrians.
