I'm not sure any story in any movie has ever mattered less than the story in Downton Abbey: A New Era. In this, the second feature film to be spun off from the six-season television series, a bunch of the residents and staff at Downton Abbey go off for a sojourn to the Riviera, while the rest stay behind and watch as a silent film is being made on the grounds. In the middle of the filmmaking, talkies break big and the movie is shut down. And in what may be the most shameless theft of a plotline in movie history, executed with utter shamelessness by Downton creator and writer Julian Fellowes, our heroine Lady Mary both suggests turning the silent into a talkie and dubs the voice of the leading lady with a screechy working-class accent. Yes, we're Singin' in the Abbey.
So Lady Mary is still...