Downton Abbey ** (2019, Hugh Bonneville, Elizabeth McGovern, Allen Leech, Maggie Smith, Imelda Staunton, Phyllis Logan, Penelope Wilton, Jim Carter) – Movie Review

Director Michael Engler’s 2019 drama Downton Abbey is a smooth, amusing and entertaining, but cliched, clunky, corny, cosy and choppy spinoff from the Downton Abbey TV show that ran six seasons and 52 episodes from 2010 to 2015. It continues the chronicle of the lives of the quirky, wealthy British aristocratic Crawley family and their even quirkier, enterprising servants in a large estate in the English countryside in the earlier part of the 20th century, around 1927. The big news is, the King, George V (Simon Jones) and Queen Mary (Geraldine James) are coming to stay – for one night only. The bad news is, they’re bringing all their own staff, and the Downton retainers are all redundant. We’, we’ll see about that.

The screenplay feels like an unused script for a TV Christmas special that the writer/ creator Julian Fellowes had in his top drawer for a rainy day. It runs like an extended TV episode, with short, gossipy intercut scenes. It has a problem gearing up again after the TV show has ended, and a difficulty adapting for the big screen, as Julian Fellowes tries to reintroduce his characters and situations, and in some audiences’ cases, actually introduce them for the first time, producing a slightly sticky sluggish start, but it does pick up after about half way, and starts to be engrossing.

Several guaranteed turns help to make it pleasurable: Maggie Smith, Imelda Staunton, Phyllis Logan, Penelope Wilton and Jim Carter are especially good value. Smith and Wilton get the best, wittiest lines, and make the most of them. It is a pity that there is not more wit to go round in the dialogue, though some of the rest of it is amusing.

A couple of the actors (Kevin Doyle as Joseph Molesley, Philippe Spall as royal chef Monsieur Courbet) feel that broad, untruthful comedy turns are the way to go, producing lowbrow humour, but, to be fair, they got their laughs in the cinema. The flashes of melodrama and the film’s serious moments sit uneasily with the generally amusing tone of the film, and the writer can’t handle these swift gear changes.

[Spoiler alert] The mini-story of the one-man assassination attempt by anti-royalist Captain Chetwode (Stephen Campbell Moore) on the life of King George V (Simon Jones) is frankly unbelievable, as are the stories of Lady Bagshaw (Imelda Staunton) and her companion Smith, the gay story with Thomas Barrow (Robert James-Collier) and royal servant (Max Brown), the thieving royal dressmaker, the drugging and/ or locking up of royal servants. However, yes, they are quite fun and very colourful.

There is a terrible score, soupily insistent and horribly unsubtle, virtually all the same notes and theme throughout. Production values are OK, but not much better than a TV episode.

Main stars Hugh Bonneville and Elizabeth McGovern are sidelined with little to do, and no subplot to play out, while Allen Leech has too much to do as Tom Branson, with two subplots to play out, one romantic and one dramatic.

It is shot at Highclere Castle, Highclere, Hampshire, England (Downton Abbey); Wentworth Woodhouse, Wentworth, South Yorkshire, England (ballroom); North Yorkshire Moors Railway, Pickering, North Yorkshire (railway scenes); and Harewood House, Harewood, West Yorkshire, England (home of Princess Mary).

© Derek Winnert 2019 Movie Review

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