Fackham Hall – A Fast-Paced, Humorous Takeoff on Downton That's Delightfully Throwaway.

Maybe the sense of end times around us: after years of dormancy, the spoof is making a comeback. This summer saw the rebirth of this playful category, which, when done well, lampoons the grandiosity of excessively solemn genre with a barrage of heightened tropes, visual jokes, and dumb-brilliant double entendres.

Frivolous periods, it seems, beget deliberately shallow, joke-dense, refreshingly shallow fun.

The Newest Addition in This Silly Wave

The most recent of these absurd spoofs comes in the form of Fackham Hall, a takeoff on the British period drama that jabs at the easily mockable self-importance of wealthy British period dramas. Co-written by stand-up performer Jimmy Carr and helmed by Jim O'Hanlon, the feature has a wealth of source material to draw from and uses all of it.

Starting with a absurd opening all the way to its preposterous conclusion, this amusing upper-class adventure fills every one of its 97 minutes with gags and sketches ranging from the childish up to the genuinely funny.

A Pastiche of Aristocrats and Servants

Much like Downton, Fackham Hall delivers a caricature of overly dignified rich people and very obsequious staff. The narrative revolves around the hapless Lord Davenport (brought to life by a delightfully mannered Damian Lewis) and his literature-hating wife, Lady Davenport (Katherine Waterston). Having lost their four sons in a series of unfortunate mishaps, their hopes fall upon finding matches for their offspring.

The junior daughter, Poppy (Emma Laird), has accomplished the aristocratic objective of a promise to marry the appropriate close relative, Archibald (a wonderfully unctuous Tom Felton). However when she withdraws, the pressure transfers to the unmarried elder sister, Rose (Thomasin McKenzie), who is an old maid already and and holds unladylike ideas concerning female autonomy.

Its Comedy Lands Most Effectively

The parody fares much better when joking about the suffocating expectations imposed on early 20th-century females – an area often mined for earnest storytelling. The trope of respectable, enviable womanhood offers the best material for mockery.

The plot, as is fitting for a deliberately silly parody, takes a back seat to the gags. Carr delivers them maintaining a consistently comedic rate. There is a killing, an incompetent investigation, and a forbidden romance involving the roguish pickpocket Eric Noone (Ben Radcliffe) and Rose.

A Note on Lighthearted Fun

Everything is in the spirit of playful comedy, but that very quality comes with constraints. The heightened silliness characteristic of the genre might grate quickly, and the entertainment value for this specific type diminishes somewhere between sketch and feature.

Eventually, one may desire to return to the world of (very slight) coherence. Nevertheless, you have to applaud a wholehearted devotion to the artform. Given that we are to entertain ourselves relentlessly, we might as well laugh at it.