Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Downton Abbey: A New Era’ on Peacock, the Continuing Saga of Rich British White People and Their Piddling Problems

This week’s episode of Terminal Caucasian Theatre is Downton Abbey: A New Era, now on Peacock. This is franchise fodder at its most erudite, being the continuing saga of a family of early-20th-century distressingly rich British lords and ladies and dowagers and heirs and whatnot and their miscellaneous footservants, created by writer Julian Fellowes. You surely know Downton originally was a television series that ran from 2010-2015, led by the irrepressible Maggie Smith; Fellowes continued the story with a 2019 film – fulfilling our desires most indefatigable, namely, bringing the wonders of PBS to the big screen – followed by A New Era, which really doesn’t give us something terribly new (until the ending at least, not that you’re gonna find any spoilers here). So consider it another warm serving of comfort food for those who like to watch generally likable upper-crust snufflers nibble on cornish hens and fret over property rights while hanging out in a house that can be seen from space.

DOWNTON ABBEY: A NEW ERA: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: We open with sweeping strings and a drone shot of the Downton grounds, which serves only as a reminder that none of us live in homes that have grounds. There’s a wedding with a cake so gigantically dense it takes two people to carve it and a room with so many books in it both Barnes AND Noble would just say f— it and quit. There’s butlers everywhere. The Dowager Countess of Grantham, Great-Grandma Violet (Maggie Smith), is fantastically old, and yet, she keeps inheriting property, in this case, a villa in the south of France, courtesy an old friend she hasn’t seen since several decades prior to the invention of the horseless carriage. She remembers that man’s promise, but always pooh-poohed it as not being entirely serious. This is just what she needs right now – another f—ing place with more f—ing grounds.

So the Dowager does what anyone would do: Promises to bequeath the villa to her great-granddaughter, mostly because she’s already bequeathed this set of grounds to that person, and that set of grounds to this person, and the other set of grounds to the other people. Meanwhile, a film crew wants to bring some cinematographs to Downton Abbey and make a moving picture, which, with its lowly actors, will bring great vulgarity to the splendorous dump. But the roof is leaking, and the film production pays very handsomely, so now they’ll be able to afford the repairs, which is a confusing plot point, because you’d think they have money oozing from every pore and orifice, and if for some inexplicable reason they don’t, couldn’t they just sell a few of the books maybe?

Or they could let the French property go for the millions it’s surely worth, but nah, a bunch of the Downtoners have to hit the road to check out their newly acquired grandiose place of insane opulence, and make a nice little vacation of it. That way, they don’t have to hang out in the same 150,000 square feet of home where lowly Hollywood people are shooting a morally repugnant movie, ew. There are potentially distressing developments in France for the Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) and his wife Countess Cora (Elizabeth McGovern), and gasp, what would happen if someone actually got upset? Meanwhile, in Downton, Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) does what she can to help the troubled film, which is an old-fashioned silent movie forced mid-production to be a talkie – which has the director (Hugh Dancy) in a tizzy, isn’t a problem for its handsome star (Dominic West), but is a big hurdle for its beautiful starlet (Laura Haddock), because her voice has all the mellifluousness of 200 crows trapped in a rusty old silo. Will all these disgustingly rich people persevere? Yeah, probably, mostly.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Altman’s Gosford Park hinged on this of upstairs/downstairs privileged/servant British dramatic dynamic.

Performance Worth Watching: Of the several hundred cast members here, Maggie Smith is as wonderful as ever playing a woman who’s as delicately incorrigible as ever. And Michelle Dockery is given the most character conflict to deal with in that she actually does things, ranging from performing vocal overdubs for the flailing movie to practicing extreme prudence because she lives in Great Britain.

Memorable Dialogue: The Dowager’s assessment of the filmmaking process: “I watched some of it. I’d rather eat pebbles.”

Butler Mr. Carson’s (Jim Carter) assessment of the French: “They’re very French, the French, aren’t they? The poor things.”

Sex and Skin: Sex? [Faints on a fainting couch]

Our Take: Hallboy, footman, valet, butler. There’s an actual servant hierarchy in Downton Abbey. And we’re supposed to like the people who live there? Well, it’s quite hard not to; they’re so charming as they work their way through jejune comic dilemmas and mildly dramatic circumstances that carry little meaning outside the grounds but so much within them. Maybe it’s the lovingly detailed and ingratiatingly mannered manner in which the events unfold; there are multiple instances in this movie in which one person will ask the other to drop the “Sir” and “M’lady” and simply call them “Bill” or “Hortense” or whatever, which is a sign that someone is making friends, not that they’d ever hug or do anything yucky like that. This is ENGLAND, you know.

But it’s the warmth and familiarity of this franchise that matters most here – and the insularity. What’s happening beyond the miniscule drama in Downton? Is there an outside world? There’s brief mention of it in a teensy subplot involving closeted gay butler Thomas Barrow (Robert James-Collier); I’d say the melancholy gent enjoys a bit of a Pride Month bump if this film hadn’t been released theatrically in April. That’s the draw to Downton, it seems – the Downton Bubble, where generally nice people juggle their dramatic small potatoes in a gently clever way.

If you want to think about it a little bit – which the servants never do, otherwise they wouldn’t be so genial – these characters make do from within the giant money-cushion they were born into, implying that we all suffer because we are human, although some suffer less than others. But thinking would be no fun whatsoever; A New Era completely meets expectations, servicing fans with lightly escapist pleasures and eye-goggling views of luxe, period-accurate lifestyles. They never address whether the roof got fixed, although it’s safe to assume that a bunch of people below them in the class pecking order, but above the movie-business louts, eventually got the job done.

Our Call: STREAM IT, but note that neophytes need not apply. Downton Abbey: A New Era will please the previously converted, and that’s all that matters. Maggie Smith is still a gem, the ’20s-era dresses are lovely, the scenery is lush, and all that.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.