Downton Abbey Cordially Invites You to Fall in Love With It Again
Downton Abbey, the movie version, is a very good season premiere and season finale of Downton Abbey rolled into one, multiplex-accessible-only, two-hour package. If this sounds like an insult it’s not meant to be. The ideal case scenario for this addendum to the enormously popular period piece, which ended its six-season stateside run on PBS in 2016, is a supersized episode of Downton Abbey that is enjoyable and substantial enough to justify its existence. The film, written by series creator Julian Fellowes and directed by Michael Engler, who directed multiple episodes of the TV original, is exactly that.
If you were a regular Downton Abbey viewer, you’ll likely feel satisfied by this motion picture experience, which brings back nearly all of the show’s key characters, bumps up the production value a few notches for the big screen, and structures its one-off story around a special visit from King George V (Simon Jones) and Queen Mary (Geraldine James). If you weren’t a regular Downton Abbey viewer, honestly, I can’t imagine you’re going to go see this movie.
The filmmakers can’t imagine it either, which is why Downtown resumes its British aristocratic action in the fall of 1927, just shy of two years after the events of the series finale, and makes no attempt to provide exposition or background to anyone who may be unfamiliar with the members of the Crawley family or the staff who serves them. It’s a smart, efficient move, and appropriate for a work so fixated on politeness and protocol. Downton Abbey assumes you already know the rules of this society and therefore doesn’t need to bother explaining them.
The movie opens with the arrival of a fateful letter from Buckingham Palace announcing that the royals will visit Downton, an occasion that will involve a parade and a dinner. (When you’re the King and Queen of England, I guess it’s completely fine to invite yourself over to other people’s houses?) This news causes much excitement and stress among the downstairs staff, all of whom must determine how to feed and attend to the monarchs. That includes good ‘ol Mrs. Patmore (Lesley Nicol), still in charge of the kitchen and working alongside the pleasantly contrary Daisy (Sophie McShera); ultra-practical head housekeeper Mrs. Carson (Phyllis Logan), formerly known as Mrs. Hughes; and Thomas Barrow (Rob James-Collier), who has taken over as butler in the wake of Carson’s retirement. In a way, Thomas has also retired in that he’s (mostly) stopped being an asshole.
Of course when Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) perceives that Thomas may be slightly jittery about the high-stakes royal social call, she goes to see Carson and pulls him out of retirement to temporarily take over butler duties. (Remember how Carson retired because he was suffering from palsy? Literally no one mentions that this happened or that it could be an issue if he returns to work.) But any bad feelings between Carson and Thomas are immediately overshadowed by the conflict between the royal staff, overseen by a snobby and rude head butler, or Page of the Backstairs as he prefers to be called, played by David Haig. When the Downton regulars are told that their services won’t be needed once the servants of the king and queen are on the premises, a tug-of-war for power — power, in this case, being the permission to carry trays of food to the uppermost members of Britain’s privileged class — ensues.
