Arriving hot on the heels of the ‘Naked Gun’ remake in summer 2025, ‘Fackham Hall’ turns its sights on prestige British period drama – most obviously ‘Downton Abbey’ – and gleefully sends it up. It skewers the genre’s familiar tropes: aristocrats marrying cousins, furtive cannabis smoking, rigid class hierarchies, and a world where female emancipation is politely but firmly resisted.

Visually, it’s spot-on. The settings are sumptuous enough that it really could be ‘Downton Abbey’, which makes the silliness land all the harder. Jimmy Carr, who also co-wrote the screenplay, appears as a priest in a role that knowingly echoes Rowan Atkinson’s in ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’ – expect plenty of awkward pauses, social faux pas, and double entendres.

There’s also a murder, pushing the film into affectionate Agatha Christie territory. The detective work is gloriously absurd – including a policeman who removes his Poirot-style moustache before questioning the suspects. Like the best spoofs, the mystery is solved almost by accident rather than intelligence.

Importantly, ‘Fackham Hall’ never pretends to be anything other than deliberately silly. It sustains its joke remarkably well across a 100-minute running time, which is no small feat for what could easily have been a stretched sketch. It’s unlikely to make anyone’s all-time favourites list, but fans of ‘Airplane!’, ‘Young Frankenstein’, or ‘Fatal Instinct’ will find plenty to enjoy.

Some critics have argued that it’s parodying something already close to self-parody – and that’s fair. ‘Downton Abbey’ itself sometimes skirts the edge of camp, which makes the boundary between homage and mockery pleasingly porous here.

Not every joke lands, but the film moves fast enough that another gag is always just around the corner. It’s disposable entertainment in the best sense: very funny while it lasts, though probably not something you’d rush to rewatch.

One of its strengths is the casting. Almost everyone looks like they genuinely belong in a serious period drama – actors like Thomasin McKenzie and Damian Lewis play it completely straight, which is exactly why it works. Jimmy Carr is the only obvious interloper – and that, too, feels entirely intentional.