A Look at Fackham Hall – This Brisk, Funny Parody of Downton Abbey Which Is Pleasantly Ephemeral.
It could be the sense of an ending era pervading: after years of dormancy, the spoof is staging a return. The recent season saw the revival of this unserious film style, which, at its best, lampoons the grandiosity of excessively solemn genres with a torrent of pitched clichés, visual jokes, and stupid-clever puns.
Playful eras, apparently, give rise to self-awarely frivolous, laugh-filled, welcome light amusement.
A Recent Offering in This Goofy Resurgence
The most recent of these absurd spoofs is Fackham Hall, a takeoff on the British period drama that needles the highly satirizable airs of wealthy UK historical series. Penned in part by stand-up performer Jimmy Carr and directed by Jim O'Hanlon, the feature finds ample of inspiration to draw from and wastes none of it.
Opening on a ridiculous beginning to a preposterous conclusion, this amusing upper-class adventure fills all of its runtime with puns and routines running the gamut from the childish up to the truly humorous.
A Send-Up of The Gentry and Staff
Similar to Downton, Fackham Hall offers a spoof of extremely pompous rich people and excessively servile servants. The plot centers on the feckless Lord Davenport (portrayed by a wonderfully pretentious Damian Lewis) and his literature-hating wife, Lady Davenport (Katherine Waterston). After losing their male heirs in a series of calamitous events, their hopes now rest on finding matches for their offspring.
One daughter, Poppy (Emma Laird), has achieved the family goal of betrothal to the right kinsman, Archibald (a perfectly smarmy Tom Felton). But when she pulls out, the onus transfers to the unattached elder sister, Rose (Thomasin McKenzie), described as an old maid of a woman" and who harbors dangerously modern ideas regarding women's independence.
The Film's Comedy Works Best
The film fares much better when joking about the stifling norms placed on pre-war females – a topic typically treated for po-faced melodrama. The stereotype of idealized womanhood offers the richest comic targets.
The narrative thread, as befitting an intentionally ridiculous parody, takes a back seat to the jokes. The co-writer delivers them maintaining an amiably humorous rate. There is a killing, a bungled inquiry, and a star-crossed attraction involving the roguish thief Eric Noone (Ben Radcliffe) and Rose.
Limitations and Frivolous Amusement
The entire affair is in the spirit of playful comedy, but that very quality comes with constraints. The amplified foolishness characteristic of the genre can wear after a while, and the mileage for this specific type runs out somewhere between a skit and feature.
After a while, one may desire to retreat to stories with (at least a modicum of) logic. Nevertheless, it's necessary to admire a wholehearted devotion to this type of comedy. Given that we are to entertain ourselves relentlessly, we might as well see the funny side.
