The much-anticipated film version of Downton Abbey has arrived and I suppose you could describe it as the Avengers Assemble of period drama, where everyone turns up and just does it all over again, but minus the throat kicks in this particular instance. Also, it’s critic-proof and the fans will race to see it even though it is, in truth, extremely predictable as well as extremely dull. Lady Mary? Wasn’t she interesting once? Didn’t she kill a Turk with sex? Why is she now so blah? Some throat kicks would have been welcome, actually. More throat kicks and fewer of Carson’s moralistic pep talks might have worked wonders.
The film is written by Julian Fellowes and directed by Michael Engler, and we have now reached 1927. I must confess once the theme music started up, and we glimpsed the estate, it did feel like coming home, and I say that even though I abandoned the TV show after the second series, mostly due to ennui, but also because I could no longer tolerate seeing Dame Maggie Smith being worked to death as a One-Liner Machine. (She’s 84, FFS; show some mercy!)
The conceit is that King George V (Simon Jones) and Queen Mary (Geraldine James, wasted) are coming to stay so the house is all in a dither. Silver to be polished. Wine to be selected. Carson to be brought out of retirement. And so on. There is, weirdly, no plot and also a surfeit of plot. There is no plot because there is no through narrative that is high stakes or leads to any kind of tension. And there is a surfeit of plot because the whole film is essentially a collection of side-plots. There is an assassination attempt.
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