Downton Abbey: A New Era review – This might please super-fans but the storyline makes Downton feel very old indeed

DOWNTON ABBEY: A NEW ERA

(PG) 125mins    

★★☆☆☆

TAKING a beloved drama to a new location is always a dangerous move – especially when that drama is named after the place where it is set.

The first Downton Abbey movie, in 2019, was meant to bid a final farewell to the upstairs-downstairs soap opera after 47 episodes and five Christmas specials.

But the doors have been flung open once again, with a storyline so clunky and unnecessary it belongs in an antiques shop.

The Dowager Countess of Grantham (Maggie Smith) has been left a French villa by a deceased marquis.

Their romantic relations when they were younger hold much mystery. So her family, the Crawleys, led by the Earl of Grantham (a distractingly tanned Hugh Bonneville), shoot off to France, with an implausibly large cohort of below-stairs staff in tow.

All very much out of their depth in the beautiful surroundings, butler Carson (Jim Carter), in his three-piece suit, muses: “They’re very French, the French . . . poor things.”

Meanwhile, back at Downton, a film crew has descended on the estate to shoot a movie.

With the house full of badly behaved movie stars including Guy Dexter (Dominic West) and Myrna Dalgleish (Laura Haddock), extras and a lustful director (Hugh Dancy), Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) takes charge with her clipped voice and solid, organised ways.

Her husband Henry has gone AWOL and writes her a letter saying he won’t be returning for a bit (something actor Matthew Goode’s agent may have received when he read the script).

The remaining downstairs staff — who have become incredibly outspoken and confident with their employers, now talking to them almost as friends — are swept away by the excitement and glamour.

The countess — reflecting how many of us might feel watching this chaotic, amateur dramatic production — takes to her bed for most of the film’s duration, demanding her meals be brought to her on a tray.

Maggie Smith, as always, has the best lines from the show’s creator and screenwriter, Julian Fellowes, and she delivers them impeccably with spike and sass.

While this might please super-fans of the long-running series, the hammy acting and pointless storyline makes the era of Downton Abbey feel very old indeed.

THE VELVET QUEEN

(12A)92mins

★★★★☆

THERE have seen some pretty unique nature docs in recent years, from My Octopus Teacher to Planet Earth.

Yet this somehow feels more breathtaking. The directorial debut by French filmmaker Marie Amiguet will hook you in and stay with you long after the end credits roll.

It stars world-renowned wildlife photographer Vincent Munier and his pal the writer Sylvain Tesson in pursuit of the rare Tibetan snow leopard. This is a story of patience, friendship and Munier’s chosen way of life, of lying in wait in a vast wilderness.

The two men watch, scan and observe, while aware of the wild eyes on them.

Munier’s photographs in the film feel like magic-eye paintings: The more you look, the more you see.

Munier’s musings about life and Tesson’s poetic observations replace normal narration. When they encounter a Pallas cat, a cute-looking furball, Tesson notes the “demonic glint” in its yellow eyes against its “plushy cuddliness”.

They meet a herd of yaks, climb into a still-warm bear cave and catch a hungry Tibetan fox on the prowl. It is no spoiler to reveal the snow leopard appears. But the spellbinding events that play out will blow your mind.

And the original score by Warren Ellis, featuring Nick Cave, adds to the magic.

365 DAYS: THIS DAY

(18) 111mins

★☆☆☆☆

ELON Musk clearly hasn’t watched 365 Days: This Day if he thinks Netflix has been overcome by wokeness.

The streaming channel has created this sequel to the steamy 2020 original, in which Laura fell for creepy mafia boss Massimo – who kidnapped her and kept her captive.

As toxic relationships go, this is as bad as it gets and this Polish movie wants audiences to celebrate it.

The soft porn production begins with Massimo seducing his bride-to-be Laura in her wedding dress against the backdrop of an idyllic Sicilian view.

It’s quickly followed by positions that would make the kama sutra blush.

On honeymoon, Laura opens her legs over a putting green hole – although we don’t see if that puts Massimo off his stroke.

One can only assume that it’s the so-bad-they-are-funny soft focus sexual encounters that turned the first film into one of Netflix’s biggest hits. It won’t be the plot and dialogue, which makes Fifty Shades seem Shakespearean.

The unintentional laughs are better than the intentional ones such as Laura’s new lover asking her ‘Am I not a gentle...man?’ after a slow motion saliva fest.

If someone tells you ‘you’ve got to see this, it’s so funny’ that might be right, but for the wrong reasons.