‘Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale’ review: Change comes to the Abbey in nostalgic final hurrah

Dir: Simon Curtis. UK/US. 2025. 123mins

Like a stately ocean liner, the Downton franchise sails merrily onwards. Following on from the international intrigue and jolly movie world larks of Downton Abbey: A New Period (2022), Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale restores the aristocratic Crawley household to residence turf and provides new threats to their lifestyle. Author and co-producer Julian Fellowes doesn’t stray from his successful formulation of soap-opera scandals and candy sentimentality, guaranteeing that common followers is not going to be dissatisfied.

The common forged don their roles like cozy outdated slippers

Whereas international box-office takings for A New Period have been round half these for the primary huge display outing, 2019’s Downton Abbey, an urge for food for consolation viewing and the chance to bid a fond farewell would possibly reverse that decline.

The instances they’re a-changing in The Grand Finale – some extent that’s laboured all through with a lot discuss of unhappy endings, contemporary chapters and the necessity for everybody to maneuver on. Maggie Smith’s imperious Dowager Duchess Violet dominated the Downton Abbey roost ever because the starting of the ITV tv sequence, which ran from 2010 to 2015. With The Duchess having died within the earlier movie, her acid-tinged quips are sorely missed. Her presence is continually referenced and felt in The Grand Finale – not least in a garish portrait that dominates the doorway corridor. The movie is devoted to Smith, who died in September 2024.

The ’present should go on’ spirit prevails because the upstairs/downstairs saga reaches the daybreak of a brand new decade. An more and more irascible Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) is all too conscious that the world he as soon as took as a right is quietly slipping away. That doesn’t cease director Simon Curtis and his common craft crew from conjuring up a sun-filled imaginative and prescient of Thirties England marked by the London season: a day on the races, tea at Fortnum and Mason, cricket on the village inexperienced, fabulous frocks and society balls. The entire movie is wrapped in a rosy, cosy nostalgia.  

The threats to Downton Abbey’s future arrive from all sides. The property is as soon as once more going through monetary smash and promoting their London residence to repay money owed is just unthinkable. The instances usually are not altering quick sufficient for Woman Mary (Michell Dockery) whose standing as a divorcee has made her a social pariah. Will she ever be capable to present her face in public once more?

Woman Cora (Elizabeth McGovern), in the meantime, hopes that her brother Harold (Paul Giamatti) might maintain the important thing to monetary salvation when he arrives from New York with information of what to anticipate from the inheritance left by her late mom. Woman Mary finds that her path to social rehabilitation might lie by way of her loyal sister Woman Edith (Laura Carmichael) and a passing acquaintance with Noel Coward (Arty Froushan).

Fellowes retains his capacity to make a drama out of a disaster, discovering some contemporary little twist or growth for every of the Downton regulars. Butler Carson (Jim Carter) is struggling along with his retirement. Prepare dinner Mrs Patmore (Lesley Nicol) is about to serve her final supper and embrace married life. Homosexual footman Barrow (Robert-James Collier) appears to have discovered his comfortable ending as dresser and lover of actor Man Dexter (Dominic West). Woman Merton (Penelope Wilton) is about to honour Violet by bringing radical adjustments to the organisation of the County Honest – if she will deal with Blimp-like traditionalist Sir Hector Moreland (Simon Russell Beale).

It’s no imply accomplishment that The Grand Finale manages to cram in a lot plot and incident but stay a easy flowing, comforting confection. John Lunn’s acquainted music swirls and swoons throughout inexperienced fields, stately piles and society gatherings, and the common forged don their roles like cozy outdated slippers. Newcomers this time embody Joely Richardson because the censorious Woman Petersfield, a smarmy Alessandra Nivola because the roguish monetary adviser Man Sambrook and, better of all, Arty Froushan trilling his method by way of an entertaining impersonation of Noel Coward, whose songs are additionally sprinkled all through the soundtrack.