Fackham Hall Review – This Brisk, Humorous Takeoff on Downton Which Is Delightfully Throwaway.
Perhaps the notion of uncertain days around us: after years of quiet, the comedic send-up is making a resurgence. The recent season witnessed the revival of this playful category, which, when done well, mocks the grandiosity of excessively solemn genre with a barrage of heightened tropes, physical comedy, and dumb-brilliant double entendres.
Frivolous periods, it seems, beget self-awarely frivolous, gag-packed, pleasantly insubstantial amusement.
The Newest Offering in This Absurd Wave
The latest of these goofy parodies comes in the form of Fackham Hall, a parody of Downton Abbey that needles the easily mockable self-importance of wealthy English costume epics. Co-written by stand-up performer Jimmy Carr and directed by Jim O'Hanlon, the film has plenty of material to mine and wastes none of it.
Starting with a ridiculous beginning to a ludicrous finish, this enjoyable aristocratic caper fills each of its hour and a half with jokes and bits ranging from the puerile to the genuinely funny.
A Mimicry of Upstairs, Downstairs
Much like Downton, Fackham Hall offers a pastiche of overly dignified the nobility and very obsequious servants. The plot centers on the hapless Lord Davenport (portrayed by a wonderfully pretentious Damian Lewis) and his literature-hating wife, Lady Davenport (Katherine Waterston). Following the loss of their children in separate calamitous events, their plans fall upon finding matches for their daughters.
One daughter, Poppy (Emma Laird), has achieved the aristocratic objective of an engagement to the suitable first cousin, Archibald (a wonderfully unctuous Tom Felton). However when she pulls out, the burden transfers to the single elder sister, Rose (Thomasin McKenzie), considered a "dried-up husk of a woman" and who harbors radically progressive notions regarding women's independence.
Its Laughs Works Best
The parody is significantly more successful when sending up the stifling norms imposed on early 20th-century females – an area often mined for earnest storytelling. The archetype of respectable, enviable femininity supplies the most fertile material for mockery.
The narrative thread, as one would expect from a deliberately silly send-up, is secondary to the jokes. The writer serves them up maintaining a consistently comedic pace. There is a murder, a farcical probe, and an illicit love affair between the roguish thief Eric Noone (Ben Radcliffe) and Rose.
A Note on Lighthearted Fun
It's all in lighthearted fun, but that very quality has limitations. The heightened silliness of a spoof can wear quickly, and the mileage in this instance runs out in the space between sketch and feature.
Eventually, you might wish to go back to stories with (very slight) logic. But, one must applaud a wholehearted devotion to the artform. Given that we are to distract ourselves unto oblivion, we might as well find the humor in it.
