Regardless of how a lot you would possibly detest its cricket bat subtlety, rampant classism and wildly patronising depictions of the working class, there’s one thing inherently, undeniably charming about Julian Fellowes’ fabulously frocked aristoporn. Partly, one would possibly surmise, as a result of its livid preoccupation with titles, formalwear, and the right approach to maintain a salad fork, makes it really feel as a lot a fantasy as The Witcher — solely with vampires and revenants changed by the horrors of impropriety.

The sequence’ second large display affair units itself up as A Very Downton Vacation, with Lord Grantham, Woman Crawley (Elizabeth McGovern), Woman Edith (Laura Carmichael) and diverse relations together with the newly married Tom (Allen Leech) and Lucy (Tuppence Middleton), packing their suitcases to go off to France together with a perpetually scowling Mr Carson (Jim Carter). Their aim? To find the mysterious origins of their new vacation residence, rooted as it’s within the passions of the Dowager’s youth. Again residence, the roof is leaking and the Abbey is want of repairs, driving the household to permit a procession of dreadful (however well-paying) ‘kinema’ folks by means of the doorways to shoot a movement image, a lot to the delight of the servants and the eye-rolling consternation of the household.

With a solid this large, Fellowes has a terrific many mouths to feed, but he serves up greater than sufficient programs to maintain everybody happy, balancing the entire affair with practiced ease and permitting virtually each character to get pleasure from their second within the solar (typically actually). After 12 years, Fellowes is aware of precisely what his viewers desires, offering ample alternative for Mr Carson to lecture continental servants in regards to the correct approach to costume (“They’re very French, the French, aren’t they?”), Daisy to get starry-eyed on the arrival of Laura Haddock’s lovely main girl (who seems to be terribly impolite and — even worse — frightfully widespread), Woman Mary to get pleasure from a little bit frisson with Hugh Dancy’s dashing director, and Maggie Smith’s gloriously razor-tongued Violet to ship an array of withering barbs (“Ms. Dalglish has all of the appeal of a verucca.”)

As a movie, this a serviceably staged and steadfastly carried out interval melodrama; as a capstone for the sequence, it’s as completely pitched a send-off as one might presumably want for. There are ghastly Hollywood sorts, Brits overseas, the whiff of scandal and a bittersweet coda that manages to interrupt down the limitations between upstairs and downstairs so completely that it’s all however assured to soften the ice round even probably the most Marxist of hearts.

Whether or not that is to be the Crawleys’ ultimate engagement stays to be seen, however it’s laborious to think about a extra good notice upon which to finish the sequence. With a fond, unashamedly sentimental send-off that sees the household heading into the Thirties “with heads held excessive”, this genuinely appears like the tip of an period.