Review: "Everything is as usual in Downton Abbey's new era"

The world's Anglophiles can breathe a sigh of relief!

Everything is as usual in the escapist fantasy of straight-backed lords and servants who love to be servants.

No difficult things like intrigue, character development or problematization of British class society have crept into the plot.

Despite the title, this sequel does not present a "new era" but "more of the same".

That is, the beautiful people in amazing clothes, who walk around in wonderful environments and worry about things.

This time a leaking roof. 

(that is, money) comes from an unexpected direction (this is where the "new era" comes in): the film industry!

England are developing one, and director Jack Barber (Hugh Dancy) needs to rent a grand estate for a month to record his upcoming masterpiece.

So appropriate then that a spectacular villa in France unexpectedly ended up in the possession of Grandma Crawley (Maggie Smith).

The family has to go there - and bring some servants - to dance to a jazz orchestra and drink wine with an aggrieved French matriarch.

Escapism, was the word.

Now also in Mediterranean version.

It's been seven years since

the last episode of Downton Abbey was shown on TV, and three years since the first film premiered.

But the craving for a bygone era is still great.

Or, rather, a nostalgic longing for a time and place that never even existed - a British 1930s where everything works out for you, whether you are gay, give birth to an illegitimate child or are an aristocratic woman who wants to work as a journalist at side of the charity lunches.

None of this is likely.

But to object to Downton Abbey deviating too much from reality is like opposing Superman so that he can fly.

Escapism is the point.

to criticize anything at all in the film.

There is nothing particularly dramatic here, nothing that causes a slight increase in heart rate.

Only little monkeys and beautiful clothes.

But that is, as I said, the whole point.

Which you either get to applaud or roll your eyes at, depending on how you feel about nice costume movies where Brits eat scones and say "Oh dear" when someone forgot to put on their jacket for dinner.