'Downton Abbey: A New Era' delivers the same old mix of warmth and tears
CNN
Again facing the challenge of coming up with plots worthy of filling a movie, "Downton Abbey: A New Era" adopts a two-track approach, feeling as cozy as a brandy by the fire. Elegant, occasionally adorable and at times quite emotional, series creator Julian Fellowes still knows how to pluck the right strings -- upstairs and downstairs -- to play a symphony with his sprawling cast.
Coming three years after the first movie and six since the PBS show signed off, this "Era" finds everyone looking a little older, with even the indomitable Dowager Countess (87-year-old Maggie Smith, who really deserves an Oscar push to go with her three Emmys for the show) having lost a step, but none of her rapier wit.
After a slow-ish start, the two flourishes wind up splitting the cast spatially, while creating opportunities to bring some new faces into the mix: An unexpected windfall in the form of a French seaside villa, mysteriously bequeathed to the Dowager by a man she'd known decades earlier; and the grudging decision to let a film company shoot a movie at the grand estate, the year being 1928, as the world is making the transition from silent pictures to talkies.
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