Downton Abbey: A New Era

Henry Talbot does not make a cameo in the Downton Abbey sequel. Here's why Matthew Goode was unable to return for the newest installment of the Downton ...

At the time, he also had scheduling conflicts, working on the TV show A Discovery of Witches. But, in reality, actor Matthew Goode's schedule did not allow for him to appear in the second Downton film. He was working on his new show The Offer and could not fit in a cameo for Downton. In The Offer, Goode plays Robert Evans, the late, legendary movie producer and Paramount Studio CEO.

Most of the original cast members reunite for the historical drama, in theaters May 20. #k5evening.

On Location: 'Downton Abbey: A New Era' Captures the Timeless Charm of the French Riviera ... Lifting the curtain on the destinations behind the season's most ...

And it had to be beautiful. So it had to be from the 1860s. Any fan of Downton Abbey knows the long-running show is inextricably linked to sweeping pastoral views of the sprawling English countryside.

In the second 'Downton Abbey' spinoff movie, the Crawleys visit the South of France, and a film crew sets up shop in Downton.

The film’s subtitle refers most explicitly to the advent of talkies, which were just becoming a thing in the late 1920s. But there are other dramatic closures, too, that signal not just the dawn of a new age but, inevitably, the end of an old one. Meanwhile, back at home, Robert’s daughter Mary (Michelle Dockery) is left to oversee a movie crew that has rented out Downton for filming, in exchange for a fee that will cover repairs to the manor’s leaky roof. Speculation runs rampant as to the nature and extent of this secret relationship, and whether the dowager countess’s son Robert (Hugh Bonneville) might really be — quelle horreur! But these introductory love stories are mere appetizers to the main course of romantic intrigue on the menu of this savory, 1928-set souffle, which concerns the possibility of a week of passion, some 60 years earlier, between everybody’s true favorite, matriarch Violet Crawley, a.k.a, the Dowager Countess of Grantham (Maggie Smith), and a mysterious French marquis. Similarly, this week’s “Downton Abbey: A New Era” — the second movie spinoff to the long-running TV soap about the ups and downs, romantic and otherwise, of a family of British aristocrats and their servants — opens with a double-wedding scene that sets the tone for several crowd-pleasing couplings that will soon follow.

The latest entry in the “Downton Abbey” franchise is amiable enough — though despite its subtitle, it rests most of its extravagant weight on cozy ...

Two fictional movie stars, Myrna Dalgleish (Laura Haddock) and Guy Dexter (Dominic West), dress splendidly and command deference, even though she was born to a fruit seller and he pops down to the servants quarters to hit on the butler (Robert James-Collier), albeit with such sexless decorum that the target of his affection barely notices. The title of “Downton Abbey: A New Era” pledges that change has arrived at the Grantham family’s mansion after six seasons of television, a previous film and a zeitgeist shift that has caused a chunk of the show’s original audience to start regarding its characters’ generational wealth with disgust and relish, as though it were a wheel of rotten Stilton. The stately series that began its story with the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 has now arrived at the tail end of the 1920s. (The moviemaking plot point may have been inspired by real life: The franchise’s shooting location, Highclere Castle, which resembles a vampire bat’s underbite, opened its doors to the show after Geordie Herbert, the Eighth Earl of Carnarvon and Queen Elizabeth II’s godson, realized that dozens of its rooms were rotting.)

Two couples on their way to play tennis. Harry Hadden-Paton, from left, Laura Carmichael, Tuppence Middleton and Allen Leech in the movie “Downton Abbey: A New ...

(Or maybe it could be a slasher movie; I’d pay to see “Downton Stabby.”) This one, written by Fellowes and directed by Simon Curtis (“My Week With Marilyn,” “Woman in Gold”) with the same workmanlike efficiency, affords its share of passing pleasures. In the most tone-deaf sequence, several of the servants (including Lesley Nicol’s scene-stealing Mrs. Patmore) are invited to serve as extras in a film scene, to don some evening finery and finally sit at the table to which they’ve spent years in dedicated, thankless service. But then the show, whatever its flaws, had the time and inclination to explore the inner lives of its downstairs characters; the movie, struggling to squeeze a massive ensemble into a two-hour story, renders the help more dramatically subservient than ever. Just as we’re invited to shake our heads in sympathy at the colossal expense and tedium of keeping a house like Downton in working condition, the Crawleys come into unexpected, wholly unnecessary possession of another sprawling piece of real estate. With the exception of Lady Mary’s conspicuously absent husband, everyone and everything arrives right on schedule in “Downton Abbey: A New Era.” A silent-film director with an eye for manorial splendor turns up with his cast and crew, to the delight of the starstruck servants and anyone who likes a self-satisfied movie-within-a-movie in-joke. Next to both “Gosford Park” and the “Downton Abbey” series, the two “Downton” movies feel both graceless and superfluous, partly because they’re structured — seemingly by necessity, though more out of laziness — around some Very Special Surprise Guests who conveniently throw the entire household into disarray.

The producers have recruited a director with more experience making feature films than previous helmer Michael Engler, but Simon Curtis (Goodbye Christopher ...

While Fellowes has been making some attempts to tackle serious issues on his HBO series The Gilded Age, there's no such social awareness in A New Era, whose main nod to changing times is a look at the transition from silent film to sound. Crawley family matriarch Violet (Maggie Smith) discovers that she's been left a villa in the south of France by a man she knew when she was a young woman, and she decides to bequeath it to Sybbie, whose complicated family position means that she might not otherwise have an inheritance. For longtime Downton fans, that shouldn't be a problem, since the main appeal of the movie is just getting to spend a couple of hours with old friends.

At Downton?”); and even more chances for the Crawley matriarch, Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham (Dame Maggie Smith), to deliver sick, extremely British ...

Not surprisingly, some of the issues that afflicted Downton Abbey the series remain issues in Downton Abbey: A New Era. Even though this movie could not exactly be described as action packed, its scenes still unfold with a quickness that can induce breathlessness. But the mere presence at Downton of these makers of cinema, who have to switch gears and turn their silent film into a talkie, serves as a reminder that the most revered people in society may no longer be those who hold titles like lord or lady. The whole movie-making story line is the most fun part of A New Era and gives Fellowes, who wrote the script, and director Simon Curtis an opportunity to do what Downton Abbey has always done best: explore class distinctions and how those boundaries are constantly changing. It should surprise no one to learn that Downton Abbey: A New Era includes a joyous wedding, an equally joyous marriage proposal, and more than one health scare; news of an unexpected inheritance (the gold standard of Downton Abbey story lines) and the uncovering of a family secret (another Downton fave); opportunities for former butler Charles Carson (Jim Carter) to demonstrate his horror at contemporary life (“A moving picture? The so-called new era begins in 1928, a few months after the events of the previous film, as the Crawleys receive word that Violet has inherited a villa in the south of France from the Marquis de Montmirail, a man who recently passed away and with whom the Dowager Countess shared a close relationship decades earlier. Like its predecessor, Downton Abbey: The Movie, this is essentially a supersized, extra-long episode of Downton Abbey with all the elements fans have come to expect from the long-running story of a privileged family committed to maintaining (most of) the traditions of aristocratic English society.

In A New Era, which serves as a direct sequel to the 2019 film, the year is now 1928, and Tom Branson (Allen Leech) is now married. Violet Crawley (Maggie Smith) ...

No. Downton Abbey: A New Era is a Focus Features/Universal movie, not a Warner Bros. Also, HBO Max will no longer be streaming theatrical movies in 2022. Therefore, you should see Downton Abbey: A New Era on Peacock as early as early July 2022. If Downton Abbey: A New Era follows a similar pattern, you can expect to be able to rent the movie on VOD in mid-to-late June 2022. For now, the only way to watch Downton Abbey: A New Era is to go to a movie theater. Downton Abbey: A New Era will open in theaters in the U.S on Friday, May 20. This marks the second feature film for Downton Abbey, the award-winning British historical drama that spanned six seasons from 2010 to 2015, and became a hit in the U.S. when it aired on PBS. In A New Era, which serves as a direct sequel to the 2019 film, the year is now 1928, and Tom Branson (Allen Leech) is now married.