Review: You're in for a treat with 'Downton Abbey: A New Era'

By Peter Travers

Well, new it isn’t. But thank the gods of old-school nostalgia trips that “Downton Abbey: A New Era,” only in theaters, is still dishing out the tasty crumpets that made the TV series such delicious comfort food from 2011 to 2016. The success of the 2019 film continuation proved that “Downton“ devotees don’t give up on a good thing even when its foundation is crumbling.

Of course, in these days of plague, racism, threats to women’s rights and Putin’s war in the Ukraine, we have no business celebrating a class system in which servants happily cater to every clueless whim from a family of rich, white, conservative, monarchy-worshipping Brits.

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A scene from "Downton Abbey: A New Era."

Turn a blind eye to all that and this second “Downton” foray into theaters delivers big-time as a guilty pleasure. At least the Crawley family displayed an elegance unseen among today’s one-percenters. In the dynasty department, I’ll take the Crawleys over the Kardashians any day.

The pearl-clutching scandal at the core of “New Era,” set in 1929, is a villa in the South of France that the Dowager Countess (Maggie Smith, as fine and flinty as ever) has inherited from a former lover. And egads, moviemaker Jack Barber (Hugh Dancy) has been permitted to shoot his silent motion picture in the Abbey inner sanctum to pay for repairs on the leaky roof.

Yikes! Setting sail for France to eyeball the villa — with butler Carson (Jim Yates) in tow — are Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville), his American wife Lady Cora (Elizabeth McGovern), their daughter Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael) and her husband Bertie (Harry Hadden-Paton).

In contrast to the stiff upper lips, there’s widowed Tom Branson (Allen Leech), the former family chauffeur and Irish revolutionary with his new bride Lucy (Tuppence Middleton). Tom’s young daughter with the late Lady Sybil is the countess’ choice to inherit the villa.

Meanwhile, back at home, we find a solo Lady Mary (a playfully sexy and spiky Michelle Dockery) — her second husband (Matthew Goode) is off racing cars — being hit on by handsome Jack — oh my! —as crass movie people invade Downton, led by leading man Guy Dexter (a dashing Dominic West) and his bottle-blonde costar Myrna Dalgleish (Laura Haddock).

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A scene from "Downton Abbey: A New Era."

Naturally everyone’s heads are spinning as “Downton” writer-creator Julian Fellowes throws out a spray of subplots so that director Simon Curtis (“My Week With Marilyn”) can rattle teacups with a decorum that detractors decry (not without reason) as formulaic twaddle.

Beginning with a wedding (Tom’s) and ending with a funeral (I’ll never tell), “Downton Abbey: A New Era” opens as many doors as it closes. Carson is shocked by the influx of show business. “Rough and vulgar actors eating at the table where the King of England once sat!” he huffs. It’s Lady Cora who welcomes the exciting intrusion of the modern world.

And it’s Lady Mary who has the bright idea to turn the silent film being made in her home into one of those newfangled talkies, an idea the countess laughs off: “I should have thought the best thing about films is that you can’t hear them.”

The tastiest bit comes when the extras go on strike and the servants dress up as lords and ladies. How’s that for a quiet revolution?

What an irony that movie money is saving the old Abbey since Hollywood cash is keeping the TV series alive at the multiplex. “A New Era” knows it’s old-hat and out of touch. But If you can shut out the real world in favor of a fantasy remembrance of things past, you’re in for a treat.