Fackham Hall – A Brisk, Funny Downton Abbey Spoof Which Is Refreshingly Throwaway.
Perhaps the sense of end times in the air: after years of quiet, the spoof is making a resurgence. The recent season observed the re-emergence of this unserious film style, which, in its finest form, skewers the grandiosity of excessively solemn genre with a flood of exaggerated stereotypes, physical comedy, and dumb-brilliant double entendres.
Frivolous eras, it seems, beget knowingly unserious, joke-dense, refreshingly shallow amusement.
The Latest Addition in This Goofy Resurgence
The most recent of these absurd spoofs comes in the form of Fackham Hall, a parody of Downton Abbey that needles the highly satirizable self-importance of opulent British period dramas. Co-written by UK-Irish comic Jimmy Carr and directed by Jim O'Hanlon, the film has a wealth of inspiration to work with and uses all of it.
Starting with a ridiculous beginning all the way to its outrageous finale, this amusing upper-class adventure fills all of its runtime with gags and sketches running the gamut from the juvenile all the way to the authentically hilarious.
A Send-Up of Upstairs, Downstairs
In the vein of Downton, Fackham Hall delivers a caricature of extremely pompous the nobility and excessively servile help. The plot centers on the hapless Lord Davenport (brought to life by a delightfully mannered Damian Lewis) and his anti-reading wife, Lady Davenport (Katherine Waterston). Following the loss of their male heirs in a series of calamitous events, their plans are pinned on securing unions for their offspring.
One daughter, Poppy (Emma Laird), has accomplished the dynastic aim of a promise to marry the appropriate first cousin, Archibald (a perfectly smarmy Tom Felton). However when she withdraws, the burden transfers to the unmarried elder sister, Rose (Thomasin McKenzie), who is a spinster at 23 and and holds dangerously modern notions concerning female autonomy.
The Film's Laughs Lands Most Effectively
The spoof fares much better when sending up the stifling social constraints placed on early 20th-century ladies – an area frequently explored for self-serious drama. The trope of proper, coveted womanhood offers the richest punching bags.
The narrative thread, as one would expect from a purposefully absurd parody, is of lesser importance to the gags. The writer serves them up maintaining an amiably humorous rate. The film features a killing, a bungled inquiry, and an illicit love affair involving the plucky pickpocket Eric Noone (Ben Radcliffe) and Rose.
The Constraints of Pure Silliness
It's all in lighthearted fun, however, this approach imposes restrictions. The amplified silliness of a spoof can wear over time, and the mileage in this instance diminishes somewhere between sketch and a full-length film.
Eventually, audiences could long to return to stories with (very slight) reason. Nevertheless, it's necessary to respect a wholehearted devotion to this type of comedy. Given that we are to entertain ourselves unto oblivion, we might as well find the humor in it.
