Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale
Things change. The original television version of Downton Abbey was about many things, but like all period drama it was ultimately it was showing us what we had come from to better know what we were now. Downton Abbey the series is no more immune to that than anything else; viewers of the original would be hard pressed to recognize it in Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale. Much of what it once was – social friction, reserved romance, repressed melodrama – hasn’t been jettisoned so much as concluded. The daughters married, most of the servants settled, the estate ordered; short of repeating old stories, there’s little left to do. What’s left is less a finale than an epilogue.
Everyone is here of course, and then some, but also not to the level you would expect. Most of the series familiar faces are pushed to mere cameos, reminding us they exist but also that their stories are spent. The classic “Upstairs, Downstairs” braid gives way to a narrower focus on the avuncular Robert Crawley (Bonneville) and his wife and daughters as they traverse the handoff of ownership of Downton to Lady Mary. The transition is jeopardized when Lady Cora's (McGovern) brother Harold (Giamatti) informs her that much of the family capital has been lost due to bad investment. As the spring festival and the time for Lady Mary's ascension draws near everyone hunts for a solution, but the drama never crests; the world’s formality calcifies into formula.
It didn't have to be this way, there are tendrils of the old Downton in view even if they are batted away and brushed under the carpet to keep out of view. As much as Downton lived and breathed on the social dynamics between the Crawley’s and their servants, it was also the melodrama of the romances each group suffered which powered the old show. Creator-writer Julian Fellowes still has that old instinct as Lady Mary’s ill-conceived marriage to racing enthusiast Henry Talbot crumbles around her, ending in divorce and social castigation. Where the old Fellowes would have made that the centerpiece of his plot, with Mary and family deciding if the exile was worth the end of the pain while the family servants looked on and gossiped about it despite their own internal stripes, this version wraps it up off screen before the film has even begun.
In theory that is to spend more time focusing on the social fallout and how that may jeopardize Robert’s plan to hand control of the estate to Mary and the next generation. And that may have been the original idea but in between came the the realization that there were so many other things which needed to be dealt with like kitchen servant Daisy becoming part of the spring festival planning committee and the introduction of newcomer Gus Sandbrook (Nivola) and his plan to restore the family fortune. Mary's social stigma is reduced to an excuse for Lady Edith (Carmichael) to plan a grand party in order to invite back all of the family members and former servants for one last time in front of the camera.
It's as beautiful as ever and the hints and nods of great societal change are still there they are merely hints and nods. Downton Abbey is a shadow of its former self not just because times changed for it but because times change for us. Rather than use the past as a reflection on today the way the original series did the best anyone can muster in the Grand Finale is a limp wave of farewell and they hope that a dash of nostalgia will make it go down well. It probably is all that an old fan of the series could want; one last short romp and, short of death, a final stroll into the sunset for the old series. But like watching a beloved athlete in their final season, it’s impossible not to compare what is to what was.
6 out of 10.
Starring Hugh Bonneville, Michelle Dockery, Elizabeth McGovern, Laura Carmichael, Alessandro Nivola, Paul Giamatti, Jim Carter and Joanne Froggatt. Starring Simon Curtis.