A Look at Fackham Hall – This Fast-Paced, Funny Parody of Downton Abbey That's Refreshingly Throwaway.

Perhaps the sense of an ending era pervading: after years of dormancy, the spoof is enjoying a comeback. The past few months saw the rebirth of this playful category, which, in its finest form, skewers the grandiosity of overly serious dramas with a barrage of exaggerated stereotypes, visual jokes, and dumb-brilliant double entendres.

Playful periods, apparently, give rise to knowingly unserious, gag-packed, welcome light amusement.

A Recent Entry in This Silly Resurgence

The most recent of these goofy parodies is Fackham Hall, a takeoff on the British period drama that pokes fun at the easily mockable self-importance of wealthy English costume epics. Co-written by British-Irish comedian Jimmy Carr and directed by Jim O'Hanlon, the film has a wealth of material to draw from and exploits every bit of it.

Opening on a absurd opening and culminating in a outrageous finale, this amusing silver-spoon romp fills all of its hour and a half with puns and routines running the gamut from the juvenile to the authentically hilarious.

A Mimicry of Upstairs, Downstairs

Similar to Downton, Fackham Hall offers a caricature of extremely pompous aristocrats and excessively servile servants. The narrative centers on the incompetent 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 various unfortunate mishaps, their hopes now rest on securing unions for their two girls.

One daughter, Poppy (Emma Laird), has secured the aristocratic objective of a promise to marry the suitable kinsman, Archibald (an impeccably slimy Tom Felton). But after she backs out, the burden shifts to the single elder sister, Rose (Thomasin McKenzie), described as a "dried-up husk already and who harbors radically progressive notions about a woman's own mind.

The Film's Laughs Lands Most Effectively

The parody achieves greater effect when sending up the suffocating expectations forced upon early 20th-century ladies – a subject frequently explored for self-serious drama. The archetype of idealized ladylike behavior offers the best punching bags.

The storyline, as befitting a deliberately silly spoof, takes a back seat to the jokes. The writer delivers them maintaining an amiably humorous rate. The film features a murder, a farcical probe, and a forbidden romance involving the roguish thief Eric Noone (Ben Radcliffe) and Rose.

The Constraints of Lighthearted Fun

Everything is in lighthearted fun, though that itself imposes restrictions. The dialed-up silliness characteristic of the genre can wear over time, and the entertainment value in this instance runs out in the space between a skit and a full-length film.

Eventually, audiences could long to retreat to the world of (very slight) coherence. But, you have to applaud a wholehearted devotion to the artform. Given that we are to entertain ourselves unto oblivion, let's at least find the humor in it.