Downton Abbey, The Movie

Or: Television Royalty

It seemed like a golden age. When sentences were crisper, even the most menial of clothes were bright and sparkling, people had purpose, and if there was suffering to be had at least in linked us closer with our loved ones. It was 2010 and we were invited by Julian Fellows master wit and Pandarus to all our early 20th Century idealism, invited us to Downton Abby, crown of Yorkshire, home the Crawleys, and the highest-class soap opera to ever air. Now we're back, one last time.

The King and Queen are coming to Downton and everyone’s in a tizzy. That’s basically all you need to know. In true Fellow’s fashion we’re tossed A plots and B plots and C through G plots. A covert staff war against the snobs from Buckingham Palace, a mysterious stranger taking an interest in Branson (Allen Leech), a suffocating marriage needing the crowbar of Crawley interference, a possible happy ending for the oft’ disappointed Thomas Barrows (Robert James-Collier), and the Edwardian version of a sexy plumber. And, of course, the continuing misadventures Mr. Mosely (Kevin Doyle, what does Miss Baxter (Raquel Cassidy) see in him?)

All our favorites are there. Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) a merciless barn owl in fancy dress, Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael) still thwarted after all these years, Carson (Jim Carter) the disgruntled penguin, Anna Bates (Joanne Froggatt) the plucky detective maid, dealing out justice upstairs and down, and Violet, the Downerger Countess (Maggie Smith) who has become an English national treasure and a spirit of the age, ministering and avenging by turns.

The best part, as all the best parts of Downton do, revolve around the Dowager Countess in finally meeting a Grande Dame who can match her quip for quip and blow for blow: Lady Maude Bagshaw (Imelda Staunton), yet another cousin of the Crowley’s. Glittery and keen, Lady Magshaw arrives in Yorkshire attended by her maid Lucy Smith (Tuppence Middleton, front runner for the 2019 Aven Tavishell Nifty Name Award), who awakes a shine in the long dormant Branson, by her humble nobility, winsome smile, and complete lack of deigning personal opinions (and this from the show that gave us Lavinia Swire (Zoe Boyle) “The Girl Who Was Born To Die.”)

Staunton is a fine finale to the show, politely unbending, and harboring a sweetness to Smith’s salt. She’s almost in as fine a form as the estate itself (Highclere castle) shot from every possible angle, in every possible light, from a tasters choice of distances. If this is to be our last visit to the lost world the film is determined to make the most of it, visually, at least. (The first sight of it, rising over the hill amid the broad shade trees while the stiff-backed grace of “Did I Make the Most of Loving You” pound away, is deeply manipulative and works like a charm). The script, unfortunately, as it often did in later seasons, tries to fit in too much, too fast, too soon. The witticisms fly but rarely end and some of the pat endings and impassioned speeches are patched and shadowed things.

It is certainly a place to end the story, not to pick it up, and it is not Fellow’s at his finest. A cynic or republican in line of assistant cook turned pub-anarchist Daisy Mason (Sophie McShera) might ask what’s the point of it all? Isn’t it all just a big bamboozlement make the past seem finer than it was, with a cash grab layered on top? Yet the sheer elegance, the light and color, the satisfaction found in a well sown dress or the joy in an underground gay club (Oh how long were we waiting for that!) the sumptuous bouquet of a ball at sunset, and the joy of being apart of something greater than yourselves.