“It’s time to move on,” Sir Robert Crawley (Hugh Bonneville), murmurs wistfully near the end of “Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale.” We will miss him and his stuffed-shirt ways; through 15 years, six television seasons, two features and a zillion costume changes, the Crawleys and their extended family have fed viewers a meticulously appointed illusion of happy subjugation, in which servants not only know their place, they guard it fiercely. For the denizens of “Downton,” chewing the cud of privilege while staring down their growing irrelevance is a way of life.
That life is not so much fading as downsizing, as the old guard passes the baton to a younger generation. And lest we worry about too many changes, Julian Fellowes’s script is stuffed with comforting constants: Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) will be indiscreet, Carson the butler (Jim Carter) will be scandalized, Sir Robert will find something to be huffy about and the family will face financial ruin.
And the formidably annoying Molesley (Kevin Doyle) — once an underling, now a successful screenwriter — will still be an ass, despite the best efforts of his long-suffering wife (Raquel Cassidy) to knock some sense into him. It’s the summer of 1930, and the clan is in London enjoying a performance of Noël Coward’s operetta “Bitter Sweet.” The musical choices this time out are especially on the nose, with a version of “I’m Old Fashioned” crackling from Carson’s record player, and Mary being serenaded with Coward’s “Poor Little Rich Girl.” She could do with cheering up: Downton is, as usual, in the red, and Robert is refusing to sell his London residence to finance the estate’s ongoing modernization. Worse, the county’s snooty tribe has learned of Mary’s divorce and she’s no longer welcome in polite society.
There’s nothing to be done, then, except get blotto and fall into bed with Gus Sambrook (Alessandro Nivola), a shifty American who appears disturbingly close with Mary’s Uncle Harold (Paul Giamatti). Harold is in town to confess to his sister, Cora (Elizabeth McGovern), that he has lost her inheritance by dabbling in Argentine currency. And to reveal that Sambrook has a scheme to get his paws on more than Mary’s bespoke bedsheets.
Down in the servants’ quarters, a leaner staff is evidence of the family’s belt-tightening. Daisy (Sophie McShera), the spicy kitchen maid, is taking over as cook from Mrs. Patmore (Lesley Nicol); Cora’s maid, Anna, is pregnant (like Joanne Froggatt, who plays her), and Carson is retiring. We also learn that Mrs. Patmore is nervously contemplating the loss of her vintage virginity, and that Carson and Mrs. Hughes have discovered carnal bliss. Though, personally, I would have been happier not knowing what the downstairs folks were doing with their downstairs.
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