A Look at Fackham Hall – A Brisk, Humorous Downton Abbey Spoof That's Delightfully Throwaway.
It could be the feeling of an ending era pervading: after years of dormancy, the comedic send-up is staging a resurgence. The past few months saw the re-emergence of this lighthearted genre, which, at its best, lampoons the grandiosity of overly serious genres with a barrage of exaggerated stereotypes, visual jokes, and dumb-brilliant double entendres.
Frivolous times, it seems, create an appetite for deliberately shallow, joke-dense, pleasantly insubstantial entertainment.
The Latest Offering in This Silly Wave
The latest of these goofy parodies is Fackham Hall, a parody of Downton Abbey that needles the very pokeable pretensions of gilded UK historical series. The screenplay comes from British-Irish comedian Jimmy Carr and directed by Jim O'Hanlon, the film has plenty of material to mine and wastes none of it.
From a ludicrous start all the way to its ludicrous finish, this amusing aristocratic caper crams every one of its runtime with gags and sketches ranging from the childish all the way to the authentically hilarious.
A Mimicry of Upstairs, Downstairs
Much like Downton, Fackham Hall delivers a spoof of very self-important the nobility and excessively servile staff. The story revolves around the feckless Lord Davenport (portrayed by a wonderfully pretentious Damian Lewis) and his literature-hating wife, Lady Davenport (Katherine Waterston). Having lost their children in a series of unfortunate mishaps, their aspirations fall upon marrying off their daughters.
The junior daughter, Poppy (Emma Laird), has accomplished the family goal of an engagement to the appropriate first cousin, Archibald (a wonderfully unctuous Tom Felton). Yet once she withdraws, the pressure transfers to the unattached elder sister, Rose (Thomasin McKenzie), who is a "dried-up husk of a woman" and who harbors dangerously modern ideas about women's independence.
The Film's Humor Succeeds
The film is significantly more successful when joking about the oppressive social constraints imposed on pre-war ladies – a subject often mined for po-faced melodrama. The stereotype of idealized womanhood supplies the most fertile punching bags.
The plot, as one would expect from a deliberately silly send-up, takes a back seat to the gags. Carr serves them up maintaining an amiably humorous pace. Included is a killing, a bungled inquiry, and a forbidden romance between the roguish thief Eric Noone (Ben Radcliffe) and Rose.
A Note on Lighthearted Fun
It's all for harmless amusement, however, this approach has limitations. The heightened silliness characteristic of the genre can wear after a while, and the mileage in this instance diminishes in the space between sketch and a full-length film.
After a while, one may desire to go back to the world of (at least a modicum of) logic. Nevertheless, you have to applaud a sincere commitment to the artform. Given that we are to distract ourselves relentlessly, we might as well laugh at it.
