Fackham Hall – This Brisk, Witty Downton Abbey Spoof That's Delightfully Throwaway.

Maybe the sense of end times in the air: subsequent to a lengthy span of quiet, the comedic send-up is making a comeback. The recent season saw the revival of this playful category, which, when done well, mocks the self-importance of pompously earnest genre with a barrage of exaggerated stereotypes, physical comedy, and dumb-brilliant double entendres.

Frivolous eras, it seems, beget self-awarely frivolous, joke-dense, refreshingly shallow fun.

A Recent Addition in This Silly Wave

The newest of these absurd spoofs is Fackham Hall, a parody of Downton Abbey that pokes fun at the easily mockable pretensions of opulent UK historical series. Penned in part by UK-Irish comic Jimmy Carr and directed by Jim O'Hanlon, the feature has plenty of inspiration to mine and uses all of it.

From a absurd opening all the way to its outrageous finale, this entertaining upper-class adventure crams each of its hour and a half with puns and routines ranging from the juvenile all the way to the truly humorous.

A Mimicry of Upstairs, Downstairs

Much like Downton, Fackham Hall presents a pastiche of extremely pompous the nobility and very obsequious staff. The plot centers on the incompetent Lord Davenport (played by a wonderfully pretentious Damian Lewis) and his literature-hating wife, Lady Davenport (Katherine Waterston). Having lost their four sons in various calamitous events, their hopes fall upon marrying off their offspring.

One daughter, Poppy (Emma Laird), has secured the aristocratic objective of betrothal to the appropriate first cousin, Archibald (a perfectly smarmy Tom Felton). But once she pulls out, the pressure transfers to the unmarried elder sister, Rose (Thomasin McKenzie), who is a spinster at 23 and and possesses radically progressive ideas about a woman's own mind.

Where the Laughs Succeeds

The spoof achieves greater effect when joking about the suffocating norms forced upon Edwardian-era ladies – an area typically treated for earnest storytelling. The stereotype of idealized femininity provides the best punching bags.

The narrative thread, as one would expect from an intentionally ridiculous spoof, takes a back seat to the jokes. The writer serves them up coming at an amiably humorous pace. There is a homicide, a bungled inquiry, and an illicit love affair involving the charming street urchin Eric Noone (Ben Radcliffe) and Rose.

Limitations and Frivolous Amusement

Everything is in the spirit of playful comedy, but that very quality comes with constraints. The amplified foolishness of a spoof can wear quickly, and the mileage on this particular variety diminishes in the space between a skit and feature.

After a while, you might wish to return to stories with (very slight) reason. But, it's necessary to admire a wholehearted devotion to the craft. If we're going to entertain ourselves to death, it's preferable to find the humor in it.