Movie Scene: Time to say toodle pip to Downton

Time to don your ballgowns and dinner jackets and mind your Ps and Qs as we take another – final – trip to the lavish surroundings of Downton Abbey. Julian Fellowes’s hugely successful show (‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ with a bigger budget), ran for 52 episodes before making it to the big screen for three outings, the last of which, aptly titled ‘The Grand Finale’ sashayed into cinemas.

Beginning not long after where 2022’s ‘A New Era’ left off, the aristocratic Crawley family, and those who serve them, are embracing change, a theme which dominates proceedings. The recently divorced Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) is struggling to get to grips with steering the ship of running the country pile while Lord and Lady Grantham (High Bonneville and Elizabeth McGovern) grapple with the idea of retiring and the arrival of her cash-strapped brother Harold (Paul Giamatti) and his mysterious friend Gus (Alessandro Nivola). Downstairs, both Carson (Jim Carter) and Mrs Patmore (Leslie Nicol) are preparing for retirement, with Carson, like Lord Grantham, unable to let go and embrace changing times.

As with previous instalments, it doesn’t really matter if you haven’t seen a single episode of the show, but having a rudimentary knowledge of previous films is something of an advantage. Returning director Simon Curtis and writer Fellowes once again do their utmost to create a painstakingly elegant upper-crust soap opera, all social standings, class divisions, and oh-so-prim and proper manners where something as trivial as wearing the wrong thing is enough to get you blackballed. With storylines involving divorce, financial misdealings, moving on and, adding levity, a country fair, the pair of them do a decent job coalescing everything together into something of a coherent narrative. However it can be somewhat jarring at times, which isn’t helped by whiplash-inducing editing and pacing. None of this will matter a jot to fans of course, who will just settle into things and, I have to confess, it’s nice being in the company of the on-screen characters, which also include the returning stage star Guy Dexter (Dominic West), his lover Barrow (Robert-James Collier) and even an appearance by Noel Coward (Arty Froushan).

There’s also room for some humour as well in the form of Mr Molesely (Kevin Doyle) and snobbish Sir Hector (Simon Russell-Beale), but the absence of Maggie Smith’s wonderfully acerbic Violet Crawley and her rapier put-downs loom large.

All that said, Downton Abbey’s grand finale is a heartwarming escapist hug of a film, bringing a sentimental closure to the Crawley family; not quite ‘top hole’ but still jolly decent fun!