Downton Abbey is a continuation of the British ITV historical series of the same name, which aired in 2010-15. Its value as a stand-alone film tends to zero, but if you have watched the original series in your time, you should not miss this picture.

Downton Abbey ran for six seasons on ITV, drawing an audience of 9-12 million viewers in the UK alone. The main idea of the show is to show the relationship and interdependence of the British aristocracy and their servants during the transformation of class relations during and after the First World War. Exactly what is beautifully shown in particular in the novels of Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, including in a series of works about Jeeves and Wooster.

The series covered the time period from April 1912 (the Titanic disaster) to December 31, 1925 and touched on both the real events of those years and fictional facts from the life of the Crowley family, their relatives, friends, household members and servants. This interesting historical period included the Great War, the Spanish flu epidemic, social and economic upheavals, the attempt of the socialists to come to power in Great Britain, the impoverishment of the English aristocracy, etc.

Rumors about a possible adaptation of the series to the film format appeared immediately after the end of the sixth season of Downton Abbey, but the work on the project was officially confirmed only in the summer of 2018. The screenwriter of the film was the same Julian Fellows, who played the role of showrunner of the original series, and Michael sat in the director’s chair Engler, who worked on Sex and the City, 30 Rock, The Big C and directed four episodes of the original Downton Abbey. Fellows, who also acts as a producer of the project, got at his disposal a very good budget of $ 20 million by serial standards and was able to turn around to the fullest.

Set in the summer of 1927, a year and a half after the events of the final Christmas episode of the series, Downton Abbey revolves around the visit of King George V and Queen Mary to Downton Abbey and the turmoil that accompanies it. Against this background, many members of the Crowley family are trying to solve their own problems and find their place in the world.

The authors brought together almost the entire cast of the original series to work on the film, with the exception of Lily James ( Baby Driver , Darkest Hour , Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again , Yesterday ), who is busy in Hollywood and too expensive for this film. In addition, the increased budget was directed to the sets, including authentic equipment of the period, and costumes. So in the film you will find even more majestic castles, luxurious cars, expensive dresses and chic interiors. Moreover, the terry royalist Fellows literally relishes every frame, showing the chic of the past era and all the pomposity and pathos of the monarchical system.

However, sometimes aristocratic manners, and the author of the script bears the title of Baron Weststaffordsky and is a member of the House of Lords, play a bad joke with Fellowes. The sense of proportion betrays the winner of the 2002 Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for the film Gosford Park , and his characters begin to talk high-flown nonsense that literally drives their teeth. This is especially felt in the final part of the picture, where the screenwriter seeks to complete all the storylines that have not been completed in the series, and complete them with a happy ending, sometimes not very realistic and eerily drooling.

The problem with the Downton Abbey film is that a person who has not seen a single episode of the original series will most likely simply not understand what is happening here, who all these people are, what unites them and why they react this way to certain events. The film looks more like an extended special episode of the series, it is aimed at fans and continues to tell the same essentially the same story without any introductory part. And in general, the conflict and the problems of the film do not pull on a separate picture, it is a really good season finale, but not an independent story.

However, Downton Abbey is certainly a beautiful film, and meeting with your favorite characters, their trademark jokes and well-known interiors of the Abbey will surely delight those who watched the original series. There are enough spectacular shots and funny jokes here to keep you occupied for two hours, although it’s really hard to endure the molasses of the last fifteen minutes.

With a budget of $13–20 million, Downton Abbey has already grossed nearly $187 million worldwide, so the film can be considered a huge success. And Julian Fellows is currently working on three television projects at once: The English Game for Netflix, The Gilded Age about New York at the end of the 19th century for HBO and Belgravia based on his own novel of the same name for ITV. So for the near future we will definitely have enough series about the aristocracy.