The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
A bit more like it
‘Downton Abbey: A New Era’ ratchets up the drama a bit, but character moments still rule the day
The familiar music. ¶ The unmistakable exterior shots of Highclere Castle. ¶ And then, without further ado, we see our English friends from another time. ¶ “Downton Abbey” is back. Again.
In U.S. theaters this week, “Downton Abbey: A players such as Kevin Doyle’s charmingly New Era” is the sequel to “Downton Abbey,” the 2019 dopey Mr. Molesley — for two more hours of relatively film stemming from Julian Fellowes’ popular television low-stakes fun. drama series of the same name about the aristocratic The film initially operates at the speed of a butler Crawley family and the servants working who’s had too high-octane tea, reintroducing us for them roughly a century ago. to the huge stable of characters in rapid-fire succession
Like its predecessor, “A New Era” is generally entertaining and attempting to give each of them a little if also rough around the edges. And, like something appropriately “Downton”-ish with which the 2019 entry, It is most concerned with getting to be concerned. However, it does eventually settle our favorite Brits back together — including but not into its main storylines, unearth some drama and limited to Maggie Smith’s Violet Grantham and Jim offer potentially landscape-altering developments. Carter’s Mr. Carson, as well as lesser but still important “A New Era” begins with a wedding, that of Tom
Branson (Allen Leech) and Lucy Smith (Tuppence Middleton), his love interest from the first film.
Sybbie, Tom’s young daughter with the late Lady Sybil, stands to inherit a villa in the South of France that unexpectedly has been left to the aforementioned Dowager Countess, Violet, the girl’s grandmother. For reasons that are mysterious to all but perhaps “Granny” herself, the late Marquis de Montmirail has bequeathed the lavish seaside property to her.