The long wait is over for the upstairs/downstairs drama in the House of Crawley. So, lift your Pinky to your Royal Dalton teacup and indulge in a silver tray of scones with clotted crème, this is the return of Lady Mary and her peeps four years since the popular PBS series ended.
If a television show looks for the ‘hook’ and a film looks for the ‘heat’ then writer/producer, Julian Fellowes, manages to fire us right up! Of course, already being cozy with the characters certainly helps to get things ignited.
The movie ‘fades in’ on the slow-mounting but familiar soundtrack we’ve come to love, just as a letter is sealed, then taken by train, delivered to the local postmaster and finally brought by bicycle carrier – on cue as the soundtrack rises – and the letter is handed to Thomas Barrow (Robert James Collier). All at once we’re back to Downton, as we follow the Butler place said letter on a silver tray to Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) which alerts him that the King and Queen will arrive for a visit during their Yorkshire tour. So much for economizing in hard times.
The tale picks up 18 months after the story ended, circa 1927, still at the magnificent Crawley estate where the frenzy of silver polishing and drapery cleaning is in full effect amidst Lady Mary’s (Michelle Dockery’s)cucumber coolness.Mary’s concerned Barrow’s not up for the task, so she pulls her dutiful Butler, Mr. Carson (Jim Carter), tending his cottage garden, out of retirement.
But when a cousin twice removed, named Maude Bagshaw (Imelda Staunton) joins in the visit, contention sets in as she has chosen another heir to her family’s fortune, instead of Lord Grantham. ‘But to who?’ becomes the mystery. (Btw, Staunton is Mr. Carter’s real-life wife.)
Of course, Granny (Maggie Smith) will have none of this. Her sharp tongue and deprecating humor are in full effect. She teams this time with a wittier Isobel (Penelope Wilton.) It also appears a new young character, Lucy (Tuppence Middleton) offers the right dose of interest to Tom Branson (Allen Leech’s) world and might be the ticket to everything.
With the royal visit comes their staff. Their butler, their footman, their chef, and miscellaneous valets, so expect a commotion coming from Mrs. Pattmore, Mrs. Hughes, Daisy and the regulars. The big catastrophe – such problems – is that the boiler has gone kaput, so the staff will have to hike water jugs to the bed chambers. And this is where the film’s charm lies. In the great pride the staff takes in servicing Family Crawley.
In the end, and in such a fatigued world of troubled times, the movie is magical and sentimental and everything you’ve come to expect. But, the real star here is the estate. The house itself…
Downton Abbey has celebrated life, deaths, wars, bankruptcies, secrets and heirs, yet it still stands as grand as ever.