The title of the second Downton Abbey movie promises a new era, but in fact this is a reheated serving of reassuringly familiar comfort food for fans of the series. The same crusty class certainties under the same cold, Wedgwood-blue skies; the same light sprinkling of xenophobia and the same eager score that bustles in between lines of dialogue like an over-solicitous waiter.
The story takes up where the last picture, already something of a redundant postscript to the television series, left off: widower Tom Branson (Allen Leech) marries Lucy Smith (Tuppence Middleton). But the Crawley family is soon shaken by two events. First, fearsome matriarch Violet Crawley (Maggie Smith), whose bon mots are now a little bon moth-eaten but who remains one of the more entertaining characters, reveals that she has acquired a French villa. Second, a film crew invades Downton, causing much kerfuffle, but paying handsomely.
In the collision between aristocracy and the world of entertainment, writer Julian Fellowes pays loving tribute to himself and his breakthrough film, Gosford Park. But a plot device that hinges on the transition between the silent movie era and the talkies is lifted rather more obviously from Singin’ in the Rain. It’s a comparison that does this artless cash-in no favours.
