French dressing
DOWNTON ABBEY: A NEW ERA
Cert 12A ★★★★ In cinemas now
The Crawleys may have entered a new era but it’s pretty much business as usual for their fans in this hugely entertaining film set at the end of the Roaring Twenties.
While director Simon Curtis plays lip service to the big screen with swooping drone shots of the stately home, writer Julian Fellowes sticks to the soapy formula that made the ITV series a global hit.
The successful first Downton movie found comedy in a royal visit and the follow-up takes the well-trodden path of the British TV spin-off and heads to foreign shores.
Lord and Lady Grantham (Hugh Bonneville and Elizabeth McGovern) head to a villa in the South of France, bequeathed to Dame Maggie Smith’s Dowager Countess by a mysterious amour from the previous century.
“I’ve found with foreigners, if you speak loudly and slowly, they bend to your will,” sniffs retired butler Carson ( Jim Carter) as he takes charge of the trip.
Meanwhile, Hollywood has come to Downton. To raise funds for a leaky roof, Michelle Dockery’s Lady Mary Talbot accepts an offer from film producer Jack Barber (Hugh Dancy) to use the house as a movie location. There’s plenty of excitement downstairs when two film stars (Laura Haddock and Dominic West) roll up at the gates.
Fellowes cribs from Singin’ In The Rain as Barber’s bosses order the silent film to be shut down and the movie to be remade as a new-fangled talkie.
The previous film ended with the Dowager revealing an unnamed terminal illness and, quite rightly, Maggie Smith takes centre stage for the touching finale. The matriarch’s rule may be coming to an end but I feel a film franchise coming on.
They head to a villa bequeathed to the Dowager by an amour years ago