Down­ton Abbey: A New Era

Dwin­dling funds and past mis­ad­ven­tures are brought to light as the Down­ton Abbey cast are dust­ed off and redis­played for a fea­ture length out­ing in A New Era. Set at the end of the 1920s, before the Wall Street Crash, this sec­ond long-form instal­ment of the behe­moth TV ser­i­al hints at how the gen­try is fad­ing, so they must take them­selves some­what less seri­ous­ly if they are to survive. 

Mag­gie Smith​’s Vio­let, dowa­ger-wit and head of the Craw­ley fam­i­ly, at one point exclaims, ​“Don’t steer me, I’m not a rac­ing car!” but dri­ve the plot she does. Smith charms, coast­ing rock bot­tom as the twinkly matri­arch. Amused, she breaks the news that she has been left a vil­la in the South of France by an old flame who has gen­er­ous­ly popped his clogs. 

Bristly mur­mur­ing about ​“The French” ensues as Hugh Bon­neville​’s Robert and co trot off to the Riv­iera to find out more about this mys­te­ri­ous­ly bequeathed estate. There are some stiff, excru­ci­at­ing exchanges between the Eng­lish and French fam­i­lies as pop-eyed ​‘I say!’s abound in between lan­guid games of ten­nis. Of-the-era sports-gear and swimwear is parad­ed, coor­di­nat­ed expert­ly by cos­tume design­er Anna Robbins. 

Mean­while back home, Lady Mary, played by Michelle Dock­ery, is left to her own devices and agrees to per­mit Hol­ly­wood to invade Down­ton as cash is need­ed to fix a leaky roof. Even aris­tos have main­te­nance issues – this fact sparks a con­fus­ing cock­tail of schaden­freude and sym­pa­thy. The deci­sion to allow actors into the Abbey is much to the cha­grin of the Earl, and much to the delight of most of the servants. 

There is a scram­ble to attend to the celebri­ties who file into the house, despite their rude­ness. This intro­duc­tion of a new kind of elite dis­turbs the class dynam­ics – glam­orous, spoilt actress Myr­na Daglish is screen roy­al­ty but speaks with a Cock­ney accent. The sub­tleties of chang­ing social hier­ar­chy are, how­ev­er, mut­ed as the pointy elbow of self-ref­er­en­tial­i­ty nudges indul­gent­ly, whis­per­ing, ​“Ged­dit? Actors, act­ing as actors in a film about actors!” 

Hugh Dan­cy plays a neutered satyr in the form of film direc­tor Jack Bar­ber, who leads Lady Mary polite­ly astray. Her hus­band is inex­plic­a­bly absent – fre­quent­ly men­tioned, he nev­er emerges, leav­ing room for tepid roman­tic temp­ta­tion. For added dra­ma, the pro­duc­tion is in trou­ble, as silent films are going out of fash­ion in favour of the ​“talkie”, and Mary is deter­mined to help save the day. The details of ear­ly film-mak­ing process­es and para­pher­na­lia pro­vide some play­ful­ly meta his­tor­i­cal intrigue. The props and cos­tumes suc­ceed through their peri­od detail in being lush­ly diverting. 

A New Era deliv­ers in the births, deaths and mar­riages depart­ment – mile­stones are met in the lives of the main char­ac­ters. But sub­plots are less well-organ­ised in this upstairs-down­stairs sce­nario. There is a loose homo­sex­u­al thread that is nev­er tied up between but­ler Thomas Bar­row and Dominic West​’s dash­ing actor Guy Dex­ter. Con­densed to brief, tense exchanges on land­ings, this rela­tion­ship is coy­ly insub­stan­tial. Though pos­si­bly an attempt at con­vey­ing hushed frus­tra­tions, the lin­ger­ing ques­tion here is why include a poten­tial­ly juicy plot­line only half-heartedly? 

Per­haps this limp­ness is in keep­ing with Downton’s posh-soap plot cur­ren­cy of gol­ly-gosh fam­i­ly secrets and watered-down scan­dals, served like a weak Alka-Seltzer on a sil­ver plat­ter by cre­ator Julian Fel­lowes as Jeeves to its long-stand­ing fans as Wooster. 

The over­all effect of this well-starched pan­tomime of British­ness is dizzy­ing – it pro­duces the pecu­liar kind of sea­sick­ness induced by cake-coloured peri­od dra­mas when they don’t quite cap­i­talise on their poten­tial for qual­i­ty kitsch, instead over-amp­ing the nos­tal­gic sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty, and neglect­ing the campi­ness that could make them so much more fun.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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