A Look at Fackham Hall – This Rapid-Fire, Witty Downton Abbey Spoof Which Is Refreshingly Ephemeral.
Maybe the feeling of end times around us: subsequent to a lengthy span of quiet, the comedic send-up is enjoying a resurgence. The past few months saw the re-emergence of this lighthearted genre, which, in its finest form, skewers the grandiosity of excessively solemn dramas with a barrage of exaggerated stereotypes, physical comedy, and dumb-brilliant double entendres.
Playful periods, it seems, create an appetite for deliberately shallow, joke-dense, refreshingly shallow fun.
The Newest Addition in This Silly Wave
The newest of these absurd spoofs comes in the form of Fackham Hall, a takeoff on the British period drama that pokes fun at the highly satirizable self-importance of gilded English costume epics. The screenplay comes from UK-Irish comic Jimmy Carr and directed by Jim O'Hanlon, the feature has a wealth of inspiration to draw from and wastes none of it.
From a ridiculous beginning and culminating in a preposterous conclusion, this enjoyable upper-class adventure fills each of its 97 minutes with gags and sketches ranging from the childish to the truly humorous.
A Mimicry of The Gentry and Staff
In the vein of Downton, Fackham Hall presents a caricature of extremely pompous aristocrats and very obsequious help. The story revolves around the incompetent Lord Davenport (portrayed by a delightfully mannered Damian Lewis) and his book-averse wife, Lady Davenport (Katherine Waterston). After losing their children in various tragic accidents, their hopes are pinned on marrying off their daughters.
One daughter, Poppy (Emma Laird), has achieved the family goal of betrothal to the appropriate first cousin, Archibald (a wonderfully unctuous Tom Felton). Yet when she withdraws, the onus shifts to the unmarried elder sister, Rose (Thomasin McKenzie), considered a "dried-up husk already and and holds radically progressive ideas regarding women's independence.
Its Laughs Succeeds
The parody achieves greater effect when sending up the suffocating expectations forced upon early 20th-century ladies – a subject frequently explored for po-faced melodrama. The trope of proper, coveted femininity provides the best comic targets.
The plot, as is fitting for an intentionally ridiculous send-up, takes a back seat to the jokes. The writer keeps them maintaining a pleasantly funny clip. There is a killing, an incompetent investigation, and an illicit love affair between the charming pickpocket Eric Noone (Ben Radcliffe) and Rose.
A Note on Lighthearted Fun
Everything is in lighthearted fun, but that very quality comes with constraints. The heightened foolishness of a spoof can wear quickly, and the entertainment value in this instance expires at the intersection of sketch and a full-length film.
After a while, you might wish to retreat to stories with (very slight) logic. But, one must applaud a sincere commitment to this type of comedy. If we're going to entertain ourselves relentlessly, we might as well find the humor in it.
