The second – and hopefully last – film spun off from Julian Fellowes’s successful TV series is as hammy, silly, and undeniably entertaining as ever
At the end of the last Downton Abbey film, the poor Dowager Countess of Grantham had graciously acknowledged a serious unnamed malady, and there was a solemn overhead crane shot of the stately home against a cosmic starlit sky before the closing credits. It seemed to all of us that this franchise was surely finished. But oh no. Downton is back. Screenwriter Julian Fellowes’s creation has lurched defiantly up from its deathbed for another Charleston around the sick-room and I have to admit – like someone with an empty tube of Pringles in their hand that was full 10 minutes ago – that I did find this film entertaining; more outrageously silly and hammy and artlessly snobby than ever, with some Acorn Antiques-style revelations of paternity shenanigans and gorgeous tailoring for the gentlemen.
It is of course several leagues below Fellowes’s original country-house movie – Gosford Park from 2001, directed by Robert Altman – and some plot ideas about the glamorous world of Hollywood movies have in fact been cheekily recycled from that film. And there is another borrowing (cheekier still) from Singin’ in the Rain. All this is something that will (understandably) annoy many, and this film may well try the patience of non-fans. But there is something diverting about the deadly serious melodrama and bizarre glassy-eyed pathos that Downton 2 is serving up. And as ever, there is something intriguing about the way Maggie Smith, when she has to deliver emotional lines – as she occasionally does – sounds less and less posh.
