Sometimes more is more.

Fackham Hall seems, at first, like another British period film with butlers and countryside vistas and daughters of the house gazing longingly at hunky working-class men. And then there’s a pratfall, a fart joke, or a glimpse of a man in a panda bear costume in a stately drawing room. Say the name of the movie with a bit of a cockney accent and you’ll get a good attitude here—throw everything against the wall, from dense, surrealistic running gags to dirty puns. With this spray-of-bullets approach, everyone has a laugh eventually.

With a joke density akin to a neutron star, Fackham Hall’s five credited screenwriters do find time for a glimmer of a story within the farce, which I suppose one could call the Airplane! of Downton Abbey. Ben Radcliffe stars as Eric No

See Full Page