Producers: Gareth Neame, Julian Fellowes and Liz Trubridge   Director: Simon Curtis   Screenplay: Julian Fellowes   Cast: Simon Russell Beale, Hugh Bonneville, Laura Carmichael, Jim Carter, Raquel Cassidy, Paul Copley, Brendan Coyle, Michelle Dockery, Kevin Doyle, Michael Fox, Joanne Froggatt, Arty Froushan, Paul Giamatti, Harry Hadden-Paton, Robert James-Collier, Allen Leech, Phyllis Logan, Elizabeth McGovern, Sophie McShera, Lesley Nicol, Alessandro Nivola, Douglas Reith, Joely Richardson, Dominic West and Penelope Wilton   Distributor: Focus Features

Grade: B

Those who have been living with the Crawley family of Downton Abbey, along with their small army of servants, neighbors and friends, for the fifteen years now (the TV series premiered in 2010) will greet this third big-screen sequel with a mixture of joy and regret—joy at seeing old friends again (minus, unfortunately, the late Maggie Smith, except in a dreamlike flashback, a portrait and many mentions of “Mama”) and regret at knowing that this is, purportedly at least, the last in Julian Fellowes’ long-running franchise.  Like all its predecessors, it’s a plush upper-crust soap opera, overstuffed with characters but visually elegant and narratively decorous.  If this is indeed the end, it will serve its devotees as a fine swan song.

As viewers have come to expect, multiple crises related to Downton drive the plot.  One is a carryover from “A New Era”—the transfer of management of the venerable estate from Lord Robert Crawley, the Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) to his older daughter Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery).  As might be expected, the earl has second thoughts about giving up control.

His natural reluctance to cede power is exacerbated by the “scandal” of Lady Mary’s divorce from her hot-rodding second husband Henry (Matthew Goode, absent from the cast because Henry is off with his cars and his mistress), which leads to her expulsion from a posh party in London: it seems that in 1930, when the story is set, the rules declare that divorced women must be excluded from high society, and in the case of this particular party, it’s especially necessary that she leave because royalty is on the guest list.  Even back home, priggish local bigwig Sir Hector Moreland (Simon Russell Beale, deliciously smarmy) agitates for her exclusion from county events like an upcoming fair.  Fortunately, plucky Lady Merton (the always delightful Penelope Wilton), the mother of Mary’s deceased first husband Matthew (Dan Stevens), subverts Moreland’s plans at every opportunity.

Of course there’s also a financial disaster.  The trans-Atlantic wealth of Lord Crawley’s American wife Cora (Elizabeth McGovern), left in the hands of her bumbling brother Harold (Paul Giamatti, doing his querulous shtick), has been lost in the collapse of the Depression (otherwise, oddly enough, barely mentioned).  He’s come to England with young financial advisor Gus Sambrook (Alessandro Nivola) to explain the loss and discuss possible future plans. 

Meanwhile momentous affairs are afoot downstairs.  Revered butler Carson (always curmudgeonly Jim Carter) is about to go into full retirement with his wife, Downton housekeeper Elsie (Phyllis Logan), grudgingly leaving running the place to his protégé Andy Parker (Michael Fox).  Long-time Downton cook Beryl Patmore (Lesley Nicol) is also on the verge of retirement, about to go off to cottage life with cheerful tenant farmer Albert Mason (Paul Copley) and turning chief kitchen duty over to Parker’s timorous wife Daisy (Sophie McShera).  Change of less tumultuous sort is also coming for Lord Crawley’s loyal valet Bates (Brendan Coyle) and his wife Anna (Joanne Froggart), Lady Mary’s maid, but a good deal of antic action is in store for Lady Gantham’s maid Baxter (Raquel Cassidy) because of her husband Joseph Molesley (Kevin Doyle), the former schoolteacher and footman turned screenwriter.

That’s because Molesley, whom Doyle again plays in slapstick form, becomes a cog in the catalytic event Fellowes invents to throw the household into a tizzy, much like the arrival of the movie crew in “A New Era,” and simultaneously end Lady Mary’s ostracism.  This time, however, the intervention is from the legitimate stage.  Matinee idol Guy Dexter (smooth Dominic West) and his factotum/lover, former Downton butler Thomas Barrow (Robert James-Collier) visit the estate and bring along West End darling Noël Coward (Arty Froushan, supremely effete), whose “Bitter Sweet” the Crawleys and their entourage had recently been enthralled with in London.  Desperate for notice from the visitors, Molesley steps into the role of footman again, leading Dexter, who finally recognizes him as a screenwriter, to utter one of Fellowes’ funniest lines about moviemaking being a “fickle business.”

But Coward’s presence is used by Fellowes in other ways.  The chance to mingle with such a celebrity leads the leaders of local society to attend a party planned by Lady Mary, which most were until then avoiding.  The opportunity to invest in Coward’s upcoming “Cavalcade” offers a potential lifeline to ruined Uncle Harold.  And the social implications of Mary’s divorce inspire Coward, whose ever-popular “Private Lives” follows shortly thereafter.

But though things ultimately work out for Lady Mary—who, alone at Downton at the film’s close has a dreamlike memory of the whole series, from her initial kiss by Matthew through a final appearance by Smith’s indelible Dowager Countess, an evocation the target audience will eat up—she has barely avoided calamity earlier on.  In a lapse of judgment which should have caused her father to redouble his qualms about turning over Downton to her, she becomes involved with Sambrook, whom even the least bright viewer will recognize as a cad and a scoundrel from his first appearance (Lord Crawley will eventually dismiss him as a “bad ‘un”).  Luckily Mary’s sister Edith (Laura Carmichael) and widowed brother-in-law Tom Branson (Allen Leech) step in to prevent disaster and allow Lord Crawley to make way, like Carter and Patmore, for the next generation.  

We often talk of “fan service” when referring to Hollywood tentpole blockbusters like superhero movies.  But with its large, familiar cast and lush production in equally familiar locations—Donal Woods’s production design is elaborate, especially in the London scenes and another at a racetrack; Anna Robbins’ costumes are glamorous; Ben Smithard’s widescreen cinematography is lustrous; and Adam Recht’s editing is leisurely enough to allow the opulence to register to the accompaniment of John Lunn’s sumptuous score—it’s not inaccurate to say that “The Grand Finale” provides fan service for the PBS crowd, and does so with customary British finesse—even if now, sadly, we must speak of PBS in the past tense.

“Downton Abbey” might never have been anything but an appeal to America’s odd but persistent fascination with Britain’s high society, in all its haughtiness and class snobbery, but Fellowes embraced it with wit and elegance, and “The Grand Finale” concludes the saga in customary style.