Downton Abbey: A New Era (PG)

Perhaps the best that can be said about Downton Abbey: A New Era is that it’s compulsively pleasant. Once again written by Downton creator Julian Fellowes (Simon Curtis is on directing duties), this sequel to the big screen spin-off from the hit TV show brings back much of the original cast for a sort of extended farewell in which everyone more or less lands on their feet. Inheritance issues, social scandal, illness and the arrival of a new populist art form referred to by one disapproving character as “kinema” might emerge as potential bumps in the road for both the Crawley clan and their beloved servants, but, as is often the way with the wealthy, bumps are all they are.

The film could more accurately have been subtitled “End of an Era” given almost all the plotlines revolve around the original show’s key characters, starting with Maggie Smith’s ailing Dowager Countess, whose mysterious inheritance of a villa in the south of France allows Fellowes to keep alive the classic British Tv-to-film tradition of sending half the characters off on holiday so that stuffy Brits can be flustered by foreigners – or, in this case, shown up to be a tiny bit fastidious as the Crawleys (led by Hugh Bonneville and Elizabeth Mcgovern) come face-to-face with the well-to-do chicness of a French marquis whose family they’re about to kick out of their Riviera property.

Potential conflict established, Fellowes elects to resolve it almost immediately so that all the characters can swan around in the sun being nice to each other. Meanwhile, back in Downton, the eldest Crawley daughter, Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery), is overseeing the arrival of a film crew who have hired out the estate to shoot a new silent movie starring a dashing matinee idol (Dominic West) and a squeaky voiced diva (Laura Haddock) who’s seen the writing on the wall with the emergence of the talkies.

General release