Downton Abbey: A New Era - A genteel sitcom with some moist-eyed goodbyes
By Jim Slotek
Rating: B-minus
By its title, Downton Abbey: A New Era sounds like a welcome, revitalizing turn in the Upstairs Downstairs-inspired tale of a titled and stately family in 1920s England. It turns out to be more of a moist-eyed goodbye.
Never a series that could be considered exactly “edgy,” Downton Abbey still managed in its five seasons to generate soapy passions and conflict, some of it class-related.
Hugh Bonneville and Elizabeth McGovern, and Laura Carmichael as Lady Edith Hexham
These have, apparently, all been resolved as the show evolves into its pleasant dotage on the big screen. With at least two characters staring their mortality directly in the face, there are heart-to-heart conversations expressing regret over past bad blood.
What we’re left with is a genteel sitcom, similar to the first Downton Abbey film in 2019 (“The King and Queen are coming to dinner!”), except more so. This time there are two Code Red events in the Abbey, contrivances that split the family in two on separate frantic tasks.
A New Era begins with the long-awaited marriage between Irishman Tom Branson (Allen Leech) and Lucy Smith (Tuppence Middleton), itself a match that was once not wholeheartedly approved, but is now a joyous affair. The good times are soon shaken however (insofar as this comfortable life in the quiet before the Depression and WWII can be shaken).
The ailing dowager Violet Grantham (Maggie Smith) calls the family to her bedside to announce that she has been bequeathed a villa in the South of France by an old flame. The late Marquis de Montmirail had held a substantial torch (notwithstanding the fact that he has a humiliated and angry still-living widow, played by Nathalie Baye).
Doubling the scandal, the family is approached by Hollywood producers to film a period drama with Downton Abbey as its location. The stuffy Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) is horrified, but is made to realize that the place is getting shabby, and that they need the money.
So, it is that the family members least happy to be around a film crew and actors set out for France - among them: Grantham, his wife Cora (Elizabeth McGovern), Maud Bagshaw (Imelda Staunton) and the fussy head butler Carson (Jim Carter). There, they hope to smooth over the troubled legal waters and sort out exactly what kind of relationship Violet and the Marquis had.
Meanwhile, back at the Abbey, love rules as a troubled silent production tries to find its way now that the Jazz Singer and “talkies” have stolen their thunder. This is the more fun of the two seriocomic premises, as the de facto new head of the household, Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) flirts with the director (Hugh Dancy) and later is instrumental in saving his film (with the help of a star-struck staff and Mr. Molesley’s scriptwriting). Dominic West is the John Barrymore-esque leading man who takes a shine to Thomas Barrow (Robert James-Collier), the head-waiter-in-waiting.
And the movie’s comic scene-stealer is Laura Haddock as Myrna Dalgleish, a Brit-born silent screen temptress whose worst nightmare is to have people hear her working-class accent, one which would make Eliza Doolittle cringe.
Director Simon Curtis and writer Julian Fellowes deliver the dual comedies of errors with cheer, sprightly/stately music and the lightest of drama. The scenery, both at Downton and in France, is worthy of Rick Steeves’ Europe. If this is a goodbye (and there are plenty of signals that it is, barring unexpectedly huge box office), it ends on a note of smiles, tears and no hard feelings.
CLICK HERE to read Bonnie Laufer’s Q&A with Kevin Doyle who plays Mr. Molesley.
Downton Abbey: A New Era. Directed by Simon Curtis. Written by Julian Fellowes. Starring Hugh Bonneville, Maggie Smith and Michelle Dockery.