★★★★☆
It’s been nearly four years since we witnessed the apparent end of the TV series Downton Abbey. It faded softly to black on the closing words of the careworn protagonist Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville), spoken to his mother, Violet Crawley, the dowager countess (Maggie Smith). “A surprise is a surprise, Mama,” he said. “And I’m sure we haven’t seen the last one yet.”
The big surprise with Downton Abbey, the movie, is that there isn’t one. Written by the series’ creator, Julian Fellowes, directed by Michael Engler, a season-six veteran, and featuring a full house of regulars, with only a couple of lower rung shuffles (goodbye, Lily James’s Lady Rose; hello, Tuppence Middleton’s Lucy Smith), the film is utterly, ineffably and often
