Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Maggie Smith, Hugh Bonneville, Michelle Dockery, Elizabeth McGovern, Allan Leech, Phyllis Logan, Jim Carter, Laura Carmichael, Lesley Nicol, Michael Fox, Sophie McShera, Robert James-Collier, Imelda Staunton, Joanna Froggatt, Penelope Wilton, Douglas Reith, Kevin Doyle, Brendan Coyle, Tuppence Middleton, Raquel Cassidy, Charlie Watson, David Haig, Susan Lynch, Mark Addy, Kate Phillips, Henry Hadden-Paton, Kate Phillips, Andrew Havill, Phillippe Spall, Richenda Carey, Simon Jones, Darren Strange, David Lonsdale, Matthew Goode.

There seems to forever be a longing for the period costume drama in which the British psyche calls out for the memory of service and the trappings of wealth and privilege, a craving especially held out hopefully for that period between the two world wars in which the nation thinks it held out valiantly in style and grace against the Spanish Flu Pandemic, rampant unemployment, the design of the Roaring Twenties, and the aftermath of the Stock Market Crash and the intolerable and inexcusable rise of the Fascist evil that was beginning to stalk Europe.

The reality of the period is different, and whilst there is a train of thought that there was order in such positions, a glory that we have lost in the ability to teach a trade in domestic service, it should be noted that even in the hard light of day, and no matter your political persuasions, there is something rather thought-provoking and curiously attention-grabbing in the way the stories of that time are interwoven into the narrative and reflections of the two sets of class prominently featured; especially in the hit series, and subsequent film, Downton Abbey.

The ending of the series in 2015 may have left many of its fans feeling bereft, missing their fix of the lives of the Crawley household, but as we have come to understand, if there is a demand from the legions then the people with ideas and a grasp of enterprise will always make such a return possible. In the Downtown Abbey film, time itself may not have changed the estate, nor the lives of those within the stately home to any type of threatening degree, but Time still ploughs on, relentless in its march to see such moments as antiquated relics tinged with beautiful and sincere touches of illusion passing as celebration and memorial of a long gone age.

There is no doubting the elegance of the piece, the sheer will of actors such as Maggie Smith, Robert James-Collier, Allen Leech, Tuppence Middleton, Jim Carter and Joanna Froggatt all combining to make a film about a privileged family and their guests, the King and Queen, played with surreal charm by Simon Jones and Geraldine James, so eminently watchable.

It is arguably in part down to the attention to detail of the period that the writer Julian Fellows brings to fore that makes Downton Abbey a riveting watch, even if in truth extraordinarily little actually happens. It is in the side view, the scenes at the periphery, such as the attempt on the life of the King by Stephen Campbell Moore’s Major Chetwode, the take on history as Princess Mary is unknowingly urged to stay with her husband, the brilliance of Robert James-Collier’s often maligned character of Thomas Barrow finding out that there was a place for him in society as a gay man, even if the time and the place were not ready for such advancement; it is these small stories that make Downton Abbey, the television series and the film, so enamouring to watch.

Downton Abbey won’t suit everybody’s perspective, but as a spectacle there is little to fault, crafted with style, routine perhaps in its following, but wonderfully captured as a piece of reflected, even distorted, British history.

Ian D. Hall