For everyone who thinks that the country house drama ought to be spelled without the "o", there's Fackham Hall, an energetic satire of all things Downton Abbey, Bridgerton, and even Agatha Christie. It arrives the same year that its main target, Downton Abbey, launched its "Grand Finale" movie. Surely we haven't seen the last of the Golden Age-set costume dramas that paint such a beguiling picture of the Great Depression: the genre is the lifeblood of the BBC. And what else would we do on a Sunday night?
Written by sketch comedy veterans the Dawson Bros. and real-life brothers Jimmy and Patrick Carr, and directed by Jim O'Hanlon, Fackham Hall is a surprisingly lavish affair, filmed in and around Liverpool's massive Croxteth Hall and Country Park. But its attitude is defiantly cheeky: say that title three times fast to get its attitude toward the travails of inbred aristocratic types, whose worries centre on who will inherit their grand old mansions.
Here, the old pile belongs to dotty Lord Davenport (Damien Hall, beneath a ludicrous wig) and his elegant lady-wife (Elizabeth Waterston). Because their four sons have all perished (Great War, Titanic, Hindenburg, sex accident), the Davenport's titles – and title to Fackham Hall – will remain in the family only if one of their daughters, silly Poppy (Emma Laird) or bookish Rose (Thomasin McKenzie) marries a close relative. Fortunately, the family motto is "Incestuous Ad Infinitum", and Poppy's engaged to odious cousin Archibald (Tom Felton, sleazing around like a young George Sanders). Says the proud pater, "I'm just glad that after years of courting, she's finally found the right cousin."
But the wedding doesn't go off as planned, and soon afterward, a key member of the clan is killed. To complicate matters, Rose – at 23, "a dried up husk of a woman," according to her mother – falls for a handsome interloper, Eric No-one (Ben Radcliffe), a Cockney pickpocket recently hired as a Fackham servant. Will true love and the laws of primogeniture triumph?
The standout performers – in addition to an always-game Lewis – are the downstairs staff, led by formidable Scottish housekeeper Mrs. McAllister (Anna Maxwell Martin, making a meal out of lines like "Rrrrrose must go to her rrrrrroom," and Tim McMullen, who's so note-perfect as a butler that he might actually be a time traveller sent here from Ealing Studios.
The filmmakers appear to have made a thorough, if irreverent, study in the ways of costume dramas. To that end, they deploy a range of humour, from deadpan verbal jousts to the schoolboy scatological. But because Fackham Hall hews closely to the stately, even glacially paced but sumptuous "Downton Abbey," the movie isn't as jam-packed with humour as go-for-broke parodies like Top Secret!, Airplane or The Naked Gun, so when a gag falls flat, and they often do, the dead spots are painful. (Dare yourself not to laugh, though, every time a famous real life personage is introduced as so-and-so, "the writer".)
Only when the movie veers off into bizarre territory, does the movie really come alive, as with an extended shout-out to, of all things, the cult martial arts movie Gymkhata. Full marks, too, for a pair of impromptu, extremely rude music hall-style ditties, that, all kidding aside, ought to be put forward for a "Best Song" Academy Award. Dream big, Fackham Hall, and get ready to strike up the band.
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