Downton Abbey
2019
Directed by Michael Engler
Written by Julian Fellowes
The bare facts … It’s two years after the last episode, so 1927. There’s only one echo of the General Strike, the dowager Countess (Maggie Smith) recalls a servant was curt to her. We watch the mail being hurried from Buckingham Palace to Downton Abbey by train, van, motor-bike and hand … there was a 1950s TV filler just like that. King George V and Queen Mary are to descend on Downton for one night. An assassin travels there intending to kill the King. He has made the natural assumption that as the son-in-law Tom Branson (Allen Leech) is Irish, everyone will assume he is the assassin. (What?) The royal entourage are unbelievably (I mean that literally) superior and demanding, and will take over from the downstairs staff. The staff plot to get rid of them and do the job themselves. Meanwhile the Queen’s Lady-in-Waiting, Lady Maud Bagshaw (Imelda Staunton) is the Dowager Countess of Grantham’s cousin who has fallen out with her over inheritance. It all ends happily ever after.
Nearly all the ones still left living in the last episode of the TV series (2010 to 2015) were keen to do it, though Lily James’ career had advanced beyond the point and she declined to reprise Lady Rose. Ed Speleers (footman Jimmy Kent) also was unavailable. For the rest, it must have been what is called “a financial pleasure.” Then they added loads of others … Imelda Staunton (married to Jim Carter, aka Carson, the butler in real life) as Lady Bagshaw, David Haig as the king’s preposterously pompous “Page of The Back Stairs” aka butler), Geraldine James as Queen Mary, Simon Jones as King George V, Kate Philips as Princess Mary, Viscountess Lascelles, Tuppence Middleton as Lucy Smith, “maid” to Lady Bagshaw, Philippe Spall as Monsieur Corbet, the King’s moustachioed pantomime French chef, Mark Addy in a lovely cameo as the proud village grocer.
The major plus … it looks glorious. Unrivalled locations in the great houses, carefully created village street, a large troop of artillery, steam trains, classic cars, superb costumes.
The first problem is that in the TV series the focus changed so that one plot thread would rise to the fore one week, another thread the next. We got to know about each of the characters over time. A long time. Because we had everyone in just the one story, few of them got enough screen time to re-establish themselves. Early on it was trying to remember them and their tangled plot-lines, then there were just too many strong characters competing for space. If you haven’t seen the TV series, I fear it will be heavy-going.
Next was the plethora of genres. We had Tom Branson in the boys’ own adventure assassination story. We had a straight sit com / farce over getting rid of the King’s butler and retainers. We had romance. We had trouble over an inheritance. We had a gay club story to show a touch of serious issues. We had sentimentality. We had illness and the dreaded visit to London doctors that never bodes well for Downton’s inhabitants. We had a pregnancy. We had a remarkably unlikeable Viscount Lascelles … but unlike most series, no major character died in the making of this movie. No car crashes. Well, one character hinted at a future demise, but given that it’s 1927 and series one started in 1912 when she was already ancient, that was only to be expected. Not that they didn’t leave it open for a sequel (which they say is already being planned)… while the end was inevitable, she does have some time left. The producers were probably hedging their bets on her availability for another.
It is too predictable. The assassin sub-plot was telegraphed from the moment he got on the train. As soon as he looked out of the window at the parade area, then put his suitcase on the bed, we knew why he was there. Though we didn’t see it, we all knew there would be a gun under the wooly vests because we have seen that move a dozen times on screen. That plot ended about half-way through the film, leaving Tom as the hero who saves the King. Not that anyone except Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) would know. If you’d been plotting it as a series on a weekly basis, you’d have had more suspicion falling on Tom, right up till after the assassination attempt too, but they didn’t have time, and Tom had to be bundled on to save Princess Mary’s marriage to the curmudgeonly viscount, then fall in love with Lucy. Tom got the most screen story of all.
Barrow (Robert James-Collier) got a lot of time too, eventually realizing he was allowed to be glad to be gay. Unusually he got to be a sympathetic character rather than the Machiavellian arch-plotter of the TV series.
Master Bates, sorry Mister Bates, (Brendan Coyle) was sadly under-employed for such a fine actor, standing about a lot, and not being accused of murdering anyone at all for the whole two hours. No one was under suspicion of killing anyone nor committing a major crime, which was novel. Then Lord Crawley (Hugh Bonneville) didn’t get much screen time either, nor did he get to hanker after any bits on the side. He didn’t even have one of his dogs die. Lady Mary had a slow start, but helps get the assassin, and tearfully resolves the future of the house.
Mrs Bates, Anna, (Joanne Frogett) solved The Mystery of the Missing Baubles, a Blytonesque description of a Blytonesque sub-plot. . When we heard the plot was about King George V and Queen Mary visiting a stately home, we wondered if they would touch upon the real Queen Mary’s habit of nicking items of worth from every place she visited. That was a spicy potential sub-plot with mileage. No, we discover instead that it was her dressmaker who is a kleptomaniac, and the only reference to the Queen’s unpleasant purloining habit is to announce how terrible it is that people would go on in future to think it was Queen Mary who was light-fingered. We thought that Julian Fellowes had an obsequious eye on a peerage when he wrote that one in. She was said to be a most unpleasant woman, but was sweetness and light here.
L to R: Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael), Lady Bagshaw (Imelda Staunton), the Dowager Countess (Maggie Smith)
Lady Merton (Penelope Wilton) has to step in to resolve the issue between the cousins, Violet, the Dowager Countess and Lady Maud Bagshaw. Maggie Smith as the Dowager, gets all the biggest laughs in the film, a combination of facial expression and pin-sharp timing. Lady Merton makes an unexplained perceptive intuitive leap on the issue which solves the whole thing. She was always a fine amateur psychiatrist and counsellor. Tuppence Middleton plays her “maid” Lucy Smith who eye-flutteringly and shyly falls for stalwart Tom Branson.
Phyllis Logan soldiers on sternly but kindly as Mrs Hughes, and her now husband, Mr Carson (Jim Carter) returns as butler, coming out of retirement to replace the nervous Barrow, who compensates by, er, coming out. They end the film walking back to their sweet cottage, but sorry, I will never think of Mrs Hughes as Elsie, nor Mr Carson as Charlie. Shudder.
Mrs Patmore (Lesley Nicol) gets her own back in the kitchen, and Daisy (Sophie McShera) her assistant is now much more assertive. Her fiancé, footman Andy (Michael C. Fox), wants to her to name a wedding date, and is driven to such paroxysms of jealousy because she gave a cup of tea to the cheeky chappie plumber mending the boiler, that he almost sabotages the whole royal visit. We all know about randy plumbers, obviously. Cliché? What cliché? She forgives him. I was not the only one who burst out laughing as Daisy tells Mrs Patmore. She’s passing carrots across the table, and they’re all small and thin, then as she holds the suddenly much longer and thicker one in her hand, she says, ‘Yes, I’m thinking about the wedding” or some such. Was it intentional? I’ll bet the crew ruined a take or two by laughing.
NOW SEE …
My 2012 comedy piece THE CURSE OF THE CRAWLEYS. DOWTON ABBEY SERIES 10 (LINKED)
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What struck me is how many of the cast we have seen on stage. They mainly look younger in real life too. We even saw Lesley Nicol (Mrs Patmore) sitting right by us watching Sophie McShera (Daisy) in the Mark Rylance Jerusalem. Then we saw Brendan Coyle in The Price in the evening at Bath Theatre Royal, and Phyllis Logan in Switzerland at Bath Ustinov Studio the next afternoon, with Brendan Coyle in the audience watching intently. We’ve seen David Haig several times: Pressure, King Lear, Racing Demon. Hugh Bonneville in An Enemy of The People. Imelda Staunton in Gypsy. – perhaps the secret of the Downton success is employing the cream of British stage acting.
