The comfy slipper: “Downton Abbey: A New Era”

I’m late to the party for Downmania, but at halfway through the fourth season, I was already acclimated to the characters and story beats and took a chance on the latest film about the Crawley’s upstairs and downstairs travails. 

Julian Fellowes struck gold with “Gosford Park”, a surprise hit for Robert Altman with a predominantly British cast (Bob Balaban is the token American, as memory serves, and Fellowes based his script off ideas from Balaban and Altman). He started carving out diamonds with “Downton Abbey” though. 

The movie, like the series, is hardly a serious critique of class in Britain, despite how it shoehorns references in to the changing times, the decline of the aristocracy, the rise of the middle class, suffrage and so on. Robert, Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville in a career defining role), is a kind man who is caught blindsided by those winds of change, along with his mother the Dowager Countess of Grantham, Lady Violet Crawley (the always amazing Maggie Smith), and others of his class. 

His wife, Lady Cora Crawley (Elizabeth McGovern turning in a series of layered performances throughout the series) and his daughters seem better equipped to adapt. The eldest, Mary (Michelle Dockery, who gets the lion’s share of gravitas and tragedy), is adamant in her refusal to marry the various suitors that are sent her way. She ably stands her ground and seems ready to accept scandal by eventually marrying her distant cousin Matthew Crawley (Dan Stevens, who has almost as much fun with his role as Robert James-Collier as Thomas Barrow, scheming footman turned butler; the two of them deal with shifts in motivation and some of the clumsiest narrative contrivances on screen, but they make them work). Then there is Sybil (Jessica Brown Findlay who would make a great Jo Marsh), the middle daughter who marries the Irish (!) chauffeur Tom Branson (Allen Leech who isn’t given nearly enough to do until later in the third season). The youngest daughter Edith (a game Laura Carmichael) is the overlooked daughter until she starts to cast about for her own identity and is often at odds with Mary (early on, she acts out of jealousy and sabotages Mary’s relationship with Matthew, but then Mary devastates Edith’s budding love with the much older Sir Anthony). Lastly, there’s Lady Isobel Crawley, Matthew’s mother who proves the Dowager Countess’s equal in landing the barbed word and Machiavellian manipulation. Not in a bad way, necessarily, she’s very much an idealist and tends to act in the interest of the greater good. And yes, that is a very purposeful use of the phrase since Isobel is portrayed to a tee by Penelope Wilton (stop now and go watch “Shaun of the Dead” for Wilton and “Hot Fuzz” for the reference, if you haven’t.) This is the upstairs folk.

Downstairs, the rep company is the remarkable Jim Carter as Charles Carson the major domo/butler over the staff. Carson is a benign authority, supportive of almost everyone (he has his limits), strict but fair and has been with the family for decades (he’s seen all the girls from birth to the present.) While Carson’s authority extends over the entire staff, the maids fall under Mrs. Hughes (Phyllis Logan, almost unrecognizable in dark Edwardian dresses) who is more empathetic than, though sometimes as strict as Carson. Both she and Carson are able confidants to the Grantham women along with Anna, who is a pivotal player early on in the series and a critical support for Lady Mary. Played with the utmost decency by Joanne Froggat, Anna is resourceful and a well of sympathy. She grows close to and falls in love with John Bates, Robert’s valet and the target of the scheming Thomas Barrow and Mrs. O’Brien (a better villainess could not have been found in Siobhan Finneran). Bates, like Anna (and indeed, most of the characters) is a good, decent (that word again) man with a past that is alternately hinted at as being perhaps darker than it is but is such a stalwart sounding board for the Earl of Grantham, it’s hard to take too seriously the obstacles to his and Anna’s happiness. 

I’ll pause here to underscore that the various plot threads in the series range for inventive to pretty clunky, though not quite hackneyed. Fellowes is too clever and too skillful to fully descend into Jackie Collins territory. 

Back to the downstairs, Mrs. Patmore (Lesley Nicol who saves the character from being a one-note caricature of the plucky Yorkshire matron) is the head cook whose apprentice Daisy Mason (Sophie McShera) may have been the hardest of the cast to round out. Daisy may have been the least thought-out (perhaps the last character to be written?) but McShera saves Daisy from being too naive, but as with Matthew, Fellowes lets the character down by saddling her with some pretty idiotic ideals at a critical time in the second season. 

Characters die and depart and not everyone I’ve covered here is in the film and it really may not matter unless you are a fan of the series and despite my reservations, I am very much a fan of the series. It’s a soap opera, not an epic; it’s coy and anachronistic in set-up and dialogue and the elements of history it uses to draw links to the fortunes of the House of Crawley range in levels of success widely. 

The recurring question critics have posed regarding the series is “who is it for”? And only a dunderhead wouldn’t be able to answer that. It’s for people who genuinely want to see decent people love and support one another while facing down conflict and tragedy and grow into better people. It’s probably also for people who don’t want to admit that they love a good soap but prefer it not be “Dynasty”. Lastly, it’s highbrow for people who have no or little clue about the period spanning the period from the sinking of the Titanic to - in the latest film - the dawn of the talkies in film. 

The series is really great fun, replete with fine performances, high production values, brisk pacing and if the writing is variable, it is mostly assured and often really quite good. The movie is all that, as well, but I think it is primarily for the fans (or as the reviewer at the A.V. Club wrote, “Viewers Like You”). I suppose going in cold wouldn’t make for a bad experience, just lacking in the connection that the Downton audience will have. 

That said, the film is as anachronistic as the series (there’s no attempt in either to employ period specific patter) but that’s hardly a deal breaker. We fall into the rhythms of the family and the staff readily as Robert, Cora, the Bateses, Carson, and Edith head for France to sort out an inheritance left for Lady Violet from an old flame before she married Robert’s father, a villa in the south on the Riviera. While they’re away, a film crew descends on the remaining staff and Mary. Occasional hilarity ensues and the mystery of Lady Violet’s past and Robert’s heritage deepens. None of this is dire or suspenseful beyond generating an acute sense of “and then? What happens next?” Most of the series coasts along like that, though in the context of the longer form, the tragedies do land and while you sense all is going to be well, that knowledge mitigates any sense of deeper darkness. These are plucky, good people, after all, even if they are clueless aristocrats witnessing their twilight. 

It is this last that should keep me lobbing critique and sharper analysis, but again, it’s not what or who it’s for. Should it be? Should there be a more pointed sense of irony and analyses of the immense and thorough exploitation of the former ruling classes in the interwar years of Edwardian England? Not here. I don’t know that Fellowes is actively pursuing some kind of apologetics here or if he sees the period through a rose-colored mist of tales he grew up with, but I don’t recall a period piece (the series of the film) so willful in its ignoring the social realities of its time but that works because the characters are so well-rendered. If the writing is sometimes creaky, the performances never are. In fact, it’s a real pleasure to see acting of this caliber on a regular basis. But in terms of what it could be? I think perhaps Fellowes is responsible for introducing a variant Britain that might find its way into the MCU. It’s best, I think, to consider the world of Downton an alternative reality. 

The movie is free of intrigue, the stakes are low, and the guest cast is ridiculously good. From Hugh Dancy to Imelda Staunton, and particularly, Laura Haddock as Myrna Dagleish (the silent film star with the Cockney accent that seems to spell doom for her career) in the English part of the film and Jonathan Zaccai as the son of the man who bequeathed the villa to Violet and the great Nathalie Baye as his mother (fleshing out a brittle character as best as anyone can) in the French part, there is a steady tone of earnestness that is Downton’s hallmark. That earnestness might draw the proceedings to a halt in lesser hands, but Simon Curtis directs with a deft hand and the pacing of the story ensures that no one overstays their welcome. 

If you know the series, this is very much slipping into comfy slippers or spending time with old friends. That’s a cliche if there ever were one, but it’s true. I get why “Downton Abbey” is the phenomenon that it is and I suspect that if you haven’t seen the series, the film would be a pleasant diversion.

It’s also because we have come to know and care about the characters that all the resolutions land. There are happy endings and send-offs abounding and one particularly moving one. None of them fall into mawkishness but are tastefully executed because, well, that’s the Downton way.

Dominic West as the movie’s male lead Guy Dexter matches Laura Haddock in brio and has a meatier role and a frankly, greater part to play in Barrow’s life. I mention this because it irked me no end that the only gay character in the series turns out to be a villain driven by disappointment and jealousy. Fortunately, James-Collier plays Thomas as far from parody as possible, but it’s not until well into the third season that Barrow is rounded out and deepened. He grows far more grounded and for that, I am grateful. 

For Downton fans, there is a wonderful wedding, a marriage proposal, and all around happiness. If I was reading this, unfamiliar with the series, I’d sneer mightily. You’ll get no sneering from me today. It’s a fine flick and tonight, you can be sure I’m going to watch another episode or two.