Another winning story, but Prose will not fix the glitch which illuminates the blue icon of the winning entry! I love those blue icon’s! Boo
Downton Abbey or is it Downright Shabby Hits The Big Screen: © Worditch News – Film Review By Julian Race
Just when you thought it was safe to come out of that dark yet cozy closet, the fifth TV re-run of the six series had finally finished on ITV3 and your sanity had been restored to “almost normal”, that flippin Julian Fellows comes up with the film version of Downright Shabby.
Being headline news and pasted all over the front pages of Worditch News, I braced myself for the question I knew would inevitably roll off my wife’s tongue. “Can we go and see Downton at the flicks”? Shit, I did not think it would be that quick but fortunately, I still had a few tabs of valium left that saw me through the screening of the full series on TV. For reasons that now escape me, I found my head nodding rather than shaking which is something I must add to the ever growing list of ailments that I needed to inform my doctor about when he had fully recovered from my previous visit! It’s possibly the onset of St Vitus Dance I thought, knowing my current health conditions; however, I’d done it, I’d agreed to go and see Downright Shabby.
Following the agreement, which was quickly set in fast drying concrete, I tried on several occasions to call my psychiatrist, but he had possibly suffered the same fate as I had and was currently residing on another planet!
The following day arrived so quickly and being sufficiently medicinally subdued, we entered screen 8 of the cinema and took our pre booked seats. All in the name of consumer interest I repeated to myself over and over.
Once all the long-term calorie abusing consumers had settled down with their family bucket of popcorn in one fist, their foot-long sausage roll in another, or at least that’s what I hoped it was and every pocket bulging with potato crisps and sweets including a two litre cardboard jug of “diet” coke hooked between their teeth, the introductory music bellowed out of the Dolby system!
The film begins with a letter being signed and then sealed down by some royal equerry or other who then hands it to a servant who then runs it down to the post office where it is shoved uncerimoniously into a sack and loaded onto the night train.
As the train thunders through the night, the post is eagerly sorted by the ever so humble postal staff and the letter makes another appearance as it is put into a pigeon hole. I wondered if it had an equity card.
The scene changes to a Post Office van trundling through traffic free streets with not an E Scooter in sight!
The scene then cuts a postman on a motorcycle heading up the long and winding driveway to Downright Shabby, it could be a BSA but I’ll stand corrected. The motorbike squeaks to a halt and the letter which appears at this point to be the star of the film is handed to Daisy’s dopey love interest Andrew who then rushes it to Barrow who just happened to be waiting for the postal delivery near the tradesman’s entrance, which given Barrows disposition is somewhere he always longs to be.
Barrow or Wheelie as I’ve nicknamed him, hands the letter to Hugh Bunny boiler or Robert Bawdy as he is named in the film who surprisingly looks twenty years younger than when he was in series six and Barrow tells him that it is a letter “from the palace”.
Unimpressed, Bob walks off with it muttering, “So it is”. Barrow who is sporting a new haircut with a tinge of grey at the sides looks bemused and returns to attend to his other duties, no doubt as amazed as I was that it only cost 1d for a red stamp to send the envelope all that way and with so many people handling it! It was at this point that I mentally noted that the gender realignment injections Barrow had taken in series six must have worked a treat as he never tried to chat up the postman!
And so, it came to pass that the royal letter revealed that the King and Queen were to visit Downright on a tour. Was Freddie Mercury to make an appearance I mused; Barrow will be pleased! The story drags on and like Bob did in series six, switches to below stairs for a change of scenery.
Now, bearing in mind the royal couple were a month away from the visit, Mrs. Fatmore, Daisy and the other kitchen staff who never utter a word, were running around with a few headless chickens or was it like headless chickens, never mind, they were eagerly preparing food like the royals were already in residence!
Plans were immediately put in place in preparation for the King and Queens visit to Downright. Unfortunately, the staff below stairs was to have their noses pushed out of joint as the royal duo always took their own staff wherever they went so were subsequently banned from serving the royal visitors.
Surprisingly, yet reassuringly caustic Cora “the borer - yawn” has very few lines in this film but decides at a family meeting to discuss the visit that Wheelie (Barrow) is incontinent, she may have said incompetent, but the ever-expanding person sat directly behind me opened another family size bag of cheese and vinegar potato crisps just as Cora spoke. I quickly ran the scene back through my mind to get back on track and decided that Barrow is either A) going to France, B) requires a few wine corks from Parsoles (Carson’s) stash to stem the flow or 3) is not up to the job! (Did you see what I did there?)
Whichever it was, the scene changes to Mrs. Shoes (Hughes) walking down the long driveway of Downright and into her garden where she catches Parsoles in the garden scraping his prize carrot or that’s what he said he was doing! Following a short discussion and after wiping his hands and his carrot on his pinnie, he launches himself fully costumed in his butlers outfit up to Downright to save the day.
The film reveals that Lady Edith is suddenly married to a right Herbert and funnily enough that’s his name in the film and is wealthier now than any of the Bawdy family put together which is another thorn in the side of Lady Mary.
Apparently, somewhere along the TV series he must have accepted Marigold the “bastard child” as the Bawdy family referred to it as.
The Dowager Violet reveals at the age of 192 she has had the results of tests and they are not good; she cannot go to university after all and even if she did, she’d never pay off the student loan or complete the course as she is ill and will pass away shortly. Did I see Robert check his watch in the background?
The royal servants arrive and imediately take over the running of the house, much to the disdain of the downstairs Downright staff.
Suddenly, and totally out of the blue, the central heating broke down and because Parsoles had cancelled the service contract with British Gas to save money, a local plumber was called in to sort it out.
With his ball cock in his hand the plumber tries his best chat up lines on Daisy which just goes to prove that men can multi task after all! The dope that Daisy is pondering on marrying gets jealous of the plumber and in his rage smashes the central heating system after the plumber leaves the house so that everyone would think the plumber was about as much use as a 12mm washer in a 13mm joint. But people were wiser than he thought and because of it Daisy promises to marry him? (Work that one out!)
The day of the royal visit arrives, caustic Cora warns Bob that he had better not do his duodenal ulcer party trick on the King or he’s banned from the marital bed and back into the spare room.
The next scene cuts to Molsley who is acting as if he badly needs a wee. Obviously overwhelmed at serving royalty, Molsley proceeds to wet himself and as if on cue caustic Cora is not amused and gives him one of her stern looks which causes his reserve tank to empty also.
The devious Downright staff downstairs decide to drug the royal chef with a double dose of sleeping draft and the royal butler is then locked in his bedroom. The result of which sees the Downright staff serving the King and Queen. With Molsley sporting a well placed washing peg to prevent spillage, all goes well.
That is except for Barrow who agrees to go out with one of the male staff that is supposed to be looking after the royals. They agree to meet at a pub later that evening.
Barrow bowls up to the pub, but his male companion is nowhere to be seen. So, being a budding promiscuous type, he is quickly chatted up by another bloke who asks him to go with him to a club.
Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather boa when they go in to this gay club where men dance with other men for Christ’s sake and when Barrow kisses this bloke full on the mouth and I suspect there were tongues involved, the woman behind me nearly choked on her fifth bag of salted nuts and proceeded to fire a machine gun of salted nuts into my right ear!
Barrow was really getting into the scene and I presume he was aroused and was about to do his “Jake the Peg” impression when in storms the local plod or police to give the finer translation and all the “Perverts” as the police called them were arrested and carted off to clink and not one of them collected £200 for passing “Go”!
The bloke who originally supposed to have met Barrow at the pub turns up at the nick and gets Barrow out without a charge and Barrow gets his first real boyfriend “to write to”! Ahhhh.
Lady Mary, who has only smiled once in the whole six series on TV as far as my memory serves me remains fairly quiet throughout and decides to marry Henry Talbot. Henry, who sports a rather long spoon neck in my opinion is yet another racing driver. However, following some one to one training with Branson in series one, she was fully up to speed with which brake pipe to cut if Henry as much as looks at her incorrectly.
But Branson, what about Branson shouts the person behind me whilst simultaneously showering my head with a mixture of popcorn, diet coke and the half sucked corner of a snickers bar. My wife hands me a tissue without averting her eyes from the screen and as if by magic, Branson appears.
An IRA member is furtively chatting to Branson who immediately gets drawn into a plot to kill the King. Branson, being the full shilling in the brains department sees through the ruse and saves the King from being shot. Branson however had secretly wanted to kill the King himself but had to ditch the idea when two undercover policemen arrested the IRA member.
After all that action we finally come to the finale, Barrow got his beau without the need to feel the full force of a coppers truncheon, Lady Mary agrees to marry Henry and buys some new metal snippers, Dowager Violet is definitely a goner but will miraculously reappear in fine health in the new series and Bob is counting her wealth, Bates still has his limp but has a classic collection of walking sticks under his belt if that is possible, Parsoles retires again to grow cucumbers, Mrs. Shoes refuses to eat his carrots, Daisy is engaged, the plumber is out on his ear, Lady Edith is thinking of modelling lingerie, Herbert is still a right Herbert, Mrs. Patmore invents a new recipe, Cora is promised that she can have more lines to speak in the next series along with several new facial expressions, the postman manages to kick start the BSA and the letter is screwed up and thrown in the trash, never to act again!
The credits roll………….
Go and see the film and tell me this review isn’t spot on!
©Julian Race 16/6/2021
Twitter @JulianRace1