Downton Abbey - The Grand Finale

Downton Abbey was the drama series created by Julian Fellowes, portraying the life of an English aristocratic family and their servants in Edwardian England from 1912 onwards. A combination of romance, drama and social comment it became so well loved that the series was followed up by three films, featuring the same characters. Downton Abbey - the Grand Finale, out in cinemas this Friday, 12th September is the last of these, bringing closure to the story arcs of all the characters.

Chiara Lubich, the Catholic mystic and founder of the Focolare movement, said that writers and journalists had a responsibility "to write with love." I don't know if it is his Catholic faith which has influenced him, but I think the popularity of Fellowes' drama, as well as being entertaining, is that he does this and he writes with love. Thus the quirks and defects of his characters only serve to make them more endearing as is the case with people in real life.

This final film set in 1930 after the financial crash, has an elegiac quality about it and the sense of it being the end of an era and the great houses and their way of life. This theme of transition and the problem of embracing change and passing on of power to the next generation is portrayed. Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) finds it difficult to really let go of control of the estate to his eldest daughter Mary (Michelle Dockery). Likewise below stairs Mr Carson the butler doesn't want to retire and leave things to his former footman.

The film also dramatises the change in moral values. Mary has divorced her racing driver husband for infidelity but it is she who has to bear the opprobrium of society. The film opens with a dramatic scene when Lady Mary is asked to leave a London ball because it has just come out in the papers that she is a divorcee. There was a ripple of shocked amusement in the cinema that there could ever have been a time when this could happen. The way the family and servants rally together to make sure Lady Mary doesn't become a social pariah through solidarity and clever strategy becomes one of the main story lines of the film. Noel Coward, (Arty Froushan) a theatre darling of the time is enlisted to help them with this.

Money troubles means the unthinkable for Lord Granville and the selling of their London house. One particularly amusing scene is when Lady Mary and Lord Grantham look round a possible replacement flat together. Lord Grantham is alarmed to think that people would be living above and below them!

One could sense the warmth in the cinema towards the film and the delight of this final chance to say goodbye to such well loved characters. I suspect, however, that the film is more for devotees than for someone coming in cold, as you would need to know the characters' back stories to get full enjoyment of it.

Watch the official trailer here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_30wFRxlnA

Downton Abbey - The Grand Finale is being released on 12 September - to book tickets see: www.universalpictures.co.uk/micro/downton-3#iframe1