Written and Created by Julian Fellowes
Directed by Michael Engler

 

According to Box Office Mojo, Downton Abbey is the number one movie for the weekend of September 20 – 22, 2019.  This film deserves every penny, beating out Ad Astra and Rambo: Last Blood.

Downton Abbey was an Emmy Award-winning British historical drama set in the early 20^th century that aired in the US on PBS from 2010 to 2016.   The series is set in the home of the Crawley Family and follows their lives and the lives of the household staff. Besides the normal soap opera plotlines of love, marriage, jealousy, murder, class struggles and sexual moralities of the time; the show brought in world events that affected anyone living in the time period:  the sinking of the Titanic, World War 1 and the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918. Each season would begin about a year or two after the last series ended, so we left the family at the beginning of 1926.

By the way? The above paragraph is more set up than Writer/Creator Julian Fellowes gives for the movie. You must be familiar with the show and these characters to enjoy the film. The entire main cast returns and picks up as if they never left.  This film is essentially season 7 condensed into a 2-hour movie. Every plotline in the movie could have easily been expanded into a 45-minute television episode.

As a fan, you want occasional updates on how the characters you love are doing but may not be able to watch ten episodes, well this film gives you the perfect peek in. Set in 1927 the film centers around the pending visit of the King and Queen to Downton Abbey. With that as a centerpiece Fellowes has expertly crafted storylines for all characters and by the end of the film closed each of them. He does all of this while leaving a few crumbs if they decided to do another film in the future. yet still not leaving major cliffhangers. I shed a few tears and applauded at the end.

This film was fan service and I’m a fan and thoroughly serviced.

5 crowns out of 5