Movie Review: Downton Abbey: A New Era (2022). Theatrical release.

For the second time, the producers of the vastly popular Downton Abbey British TV series, about an aristocratic English family living in an old country mansion with their downstairs servant crew, have extended the story line of the show with a theatrical movie featuring all the same characters, actors and of course the glamorous old mansion where almost all the action takes place.  I had the good fortune to see it a couple of weeks ago on vacation, my first trip back into a public theater since the pandemic began, and in the longest continuously operating theater in the country!  It was really fun to be back in a movie theater again.

The first Downton Abbey movie, released in 2019, was set in the mid-1920s, and explored all the tensions and excitement upstairs and downstairs caused by a weekend visit by the king and queen of England (and their extensive staff, of course) to Downton Abbey.  It was well-received by the large world of Downton Abbey fans, but in fact it didn’t have a great deal of dramatic tension – nothing really important was at stake for any of the characters, as I recall.  For fans, though, it was just fun to see all the familiar, beloved characters back again, being together and doing what they do in their glorious old house.

This second outing makes an attempt to get back to more of the sort of intrigue, uncertainty and jockeying for position within the family and the household staff that drove the plot of the TV show.  The end of the 1920s is approaching, the world is changing, and suddenly it turns out that Violet (Maggie Smith), the ailing grand dame of the family, has inherited an exotic villa in Italy from a long-ago suitor, which she intends to pass on to one of her grandchildren.

While some of the family and staff head off to meet the prior owners of the villa, and try to piece together what long-ago romantic events (and possible scandal) caused this unexpected gift, the rest of the family and staff are at home, hosting a film crew that is making a silent movie in the grand old house, just as the industry is starting the transition to “talkies”.

There’s a lot going on in the family and the larger world outside, and it’s all the usual fun and surprises in the relatively safe world of the extended Crawley family.  Recommended.