A panacea for Downton fans, Downton Abbey: A New Era is as insubstantial as a cucumber sandwich with the crusts cut off.

Set at the start of the 1930s, there doesn’t seem to be much troubling the folks at Downton. Perhaps we are supposed to understand the optimism that many would have had at the time, unaware of the impending Great Depression and the rise of fascism in Germany.

We start with the wedding of Tom Branson (Allen Leech) and Lucy (Tuppence Middleton). I can’t quite remember who Lucy is but she’s not a commoner and Tom as working class agitator seems to be a thing of the past. Lucy’s mum is Imelda Staunton and that’s probably the most remarkable thing to say about her character. It seems everyone is happily married, both below and above stairs. Even Mary (Michelle Dockery) seems content with a conveniently absent husband who doesn’t bother her too much as he seeks ‘adventure’.

Whereas the TV series took us through some real world problems – war, pandemic, homophobia, illegitimate birth – this latest outing settles for ‘it must have sounded good on paper’ invented dramas in place of a dramatic arc. The two main ones – Violet (Maggie Smith) being left a French villa by a mysterious Marquis and the use of Downton as a (Shock! Horror!) film location – give plenty of opportunities for Carson (Jim Carter) to huff and disapprove and Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) to stumble around in confusion. Either could have been given depth but director Simon Curtis seems content to paddle in the shallows. Both (no real spoiler here) turn out to essentially be MacGuffins and just backdrops to set scenes that allow each beloved character to thoroughly inhabit their stereotype.

There are many small rose-tinted resolutions for individuals, designed, no doubt, to make us feel warm and fuzzy and that awful things like homophobia and being unmarried can be easily fixed. Every problem is resolved by a timely conversation and ‘good intentions’ and although some are welcome – Thomas’s (Robert James-Collier) eyes shining as something finally goes right for him – most feel contrived and a bit too neat. It seems to be a swan song for the aristocracy, bathed in a golden light where everyone is decent and happy to keep to their place.

And then all of a sudden the tone shifts and we have a hasty and unheralded tragedy that feels like nothing more than an attempt to milk a bit more emotion out of the pedestrian narrative. It feels like the franchise has run out of steam just before world events get interesting and the impact on the upper class of post-WWII modernisation might require a harsher light.

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