TIME

THE DOWNTON ABBEY CREW EXITS THE ROARING ’20S WITH A FLOURISH

TV series had legions of fans during its six-season run, you don’t have to be one of them to enjoy the second film to spin off from the show. Set in the waning finds the Crawley family distracted from its typical genteel-rich-people routine by two enticing prospects. First, a film director (Hugh Dancy), making a moving picture with actual stars (played, delightfully, by Dominic West and Laura Haddock), wants to use the Crawley estate as a location. Will peppery matriarch Violet (Maggie Smith) allow such an indignity? And then, almost simultaneously, Violet learns she has inherited a villa in the south of France from a long-ago lover, and her son Robert and his wife Cora (Hugh Bonneville and Elizabeth McGovern) pack up half the family, along with a whole wardrobe of floaty silks and linens, to check it out.

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