PLOT: An ailing Dowager Countess (Maggie Smith) reveals to her family that she’s been left a villa in the south of France. Eager to leave the property to her granddaughter Sybill, she sends Lord and Lady Grantham (Hugh Bonneville & Elizabeth McGovern) to investigate, only for Robert to discover his father may not be who he thinks he is. Meanwhile, Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) has her hands full with an English film crew shooting at Downton, who are forced to make a challenging transition to the “talkies.”
REVIEW: I am unapologetic in my love of Downton Abbey. If you’re a fan of the show, you get it. If you’re not a fan – you don’t. My own fiancee scoffs at my love of this gentle period drama, but what can I say? It’s just…nice. Downton Abbey: A New Era is just like the first film in that it feels like two episodes strung together. Not much happens, and the transition to cinema hasn’t been taken advantage of to broaden the scope of their mild adventures. And you know what? I still loved it and didn’t want it to end. Such is the power of Downton Abbey.
However, some small concessions have been made to the fact that everyone at Downton would be getting pretty long-in-the-tooth by this point. Smith’s Dowager Countess would be well over 100, making the notion that “times move on but they don’t” increasingly hard to swallow. If the movie is two episodes slapped together, it’s easy to admit that the B-plot of Mary working with a film crew at Downton is easily the more intriguing part. This is a surprise as more money was probably thrown at the “A-story,” which takes the two biggest names in the cast, Bonneville and McGovern, to France, with the newly married Tom Branson (Allen Leech) and the never-quite-retired Carson (Jim Carter) at their side.
It probably all comes down to who your favorite characters are. I’ve always had a soft spot for Lady Mary and the household staff at Downton, while Lord Grantham always seemed a little thick between the ears, which I think is intentional to some point as he’s a man out of step with his times. He and McGovern still have lovely chemistry, making a plot twist involving her health troubling for Downton fans, but I can’t reveal more.
What I didn’t like about the movie is that many of my favorite characters got very little to do. The ever-rebellious Branson is happily married now and passive, with his roguishness toned down, making him firmly of the “upstairs” gang. My two favorite characters, Anna (Joanne Froggatt) and John (Brendan Coyle) Bates, barely get anything to do at a;;, with Mr. Bates especially playing a minor role in the proceedings. At least Anna gets a foil in Laura Haddock’s screen siren, who sports a thick working-class accent that spells doom for her transition to talkies.
At the same time, some characters are pretty well served, notably the formerly evil Barrow (Robert James-Collier ), who’s now one of the most beloved characters. He gets a nice relationship with Dominic West as the silent film star, who takes a quick liking to him and wants to whisk him away to Los Angeles, a world Barrow might find more accepting of his homosexuality. The always unlucky Moseley (Kevin Doyle) also gets his moment to shine, with Mary enlisting him as a screenwriter once the silent film becomes a talkie, something the director (Hugh Dancy) realizes he’s a genius at.
Which brings me to this point – if you’re still reading this review because you want to know what the gang at Downton are up to, you can stop reading right here. See the movie. You’ll love it. If you’re not a Downton fan, this won’t convince you. Show mastermind Julian Fellows has written this as fan service, and it shows. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if you’re looking to finally get into Downton Abbey, this is a bad place to start as it not only assumes you’ve seen every episode, but it assumes you know them well. It’s strictly for fans, but I’m willing to bet there are still a lot of those out there. It may not be a massive hit theatrically, but this movie will kill on streaming.