Jimmy Carr’s Downton spoof Fackham Hall is obsessed with penises

Fackham Hall is as unsubtle and unserious as its title suggests, two qualities essential for any spoof movie to be even halfway good.

Following hot on the heels of The Naked Gun and attempting to profit shamelessly from Downton Abbey’s popularity, is this comedy genre making a comeback? Perhaps, although Fackham Hall’s hits and misses prove that parodying well requires a delicate balance.

Its Monty Python inspirations are obvious, as is its five-person writing team, led by brothers Patrick and Jimmy Carr and their ‘original’ idea.

Fackham Hall has everything, comedy-wise – silliness, sight gags, slapstick, play on words and shock tactics – but is at its best when it’s darkest or most truthful.

‘But we’re the aristocracy, surely laws don’t apply to us?’ sniffs one character of the murder investigation at the heart of the film. That hits as hard as ever in today’s society, where people still use privilege to try and keep themselves above the law.

But here it’s 1931, and after 400 years the Davenports of Fackham are financially struggling.

Damian Lewis’s dim Humphrey and Katherine Waterston’s brittle Prudence are relying on their younger daughter Poppy (Emma Laird) to marry her odious cousin Archibald (Tom Felton, continuing his strong line of villains) so they don’t get kicked out of their ancestral home.

They’ve previously had the damn bad luck to lose all four sons in separate accidents, including in the sinking of the Titanic and to a fatal danger wank (the first of several references to remind you of Jimmy Carr’s input, outside of his befuddled vicar cameo).

Oldest daughter Rose (Thomasin McKenzie) is meanwhile a wizened spinster of – gasp – 23, considered on the shelf until her meet-cute with charming pick-pocket Eric Noone (Ben Radcliffe), who she manages to run over.

Eric is an adult orphan tasked by an investigator (Ian Bartholomew) with delivering a letter to Fackham Hall from London, where he was raised by nuns whose ‘doors are always open to men with an interest in a specific child’ – which drew the biggest laugh in my screening.

It’s a predictable storyline buoyed by a strong cast who get stuck into the film’s ridiculousness. Lewis shows flair for this kind of comedy as the ineffectual patriarch, while Radcliffe has the charm for our grifter hero Eric, who is later framed for murder.

There are also admirable supporting turns from Anna Maxwell Martin as permanently unimpressed housekeeper Mrs McAllister and Sue Johnston as Great Aunt Bonaparte, whose asides such as ‘wasteman just got merked’ manage to remain on this side of cringe (just about).

It’s a hoot too to see Juliet Mills’s ‘introducing’ credit as the film’s narrator.

Fackham Hall’s strengths also lie in fun references to the period, such as ‘unpublished writer’ J.R.R. Tolkien (Jason Done), a house guest casting around for inspiration.

The film claims a grand total of 278 jokes with only 36 used across both trailers, but these are undoubtedly a lot of the best bits with some of the remaining 242 quips and gags failing to land satisfactorily – and quite a lot of them devoted to penises.

It could just be my smaller and somewhat stony-faced audience which failed to help some of those gags achieve lift off, as I’m sure a more gregarious crowd’s laughs would have enhanced the viewing experience.

As with any spoof, it will always be seen at its best when playing to a large crowd, with chuckle encouraging chuckle.

Fackham Hall is in UK cinemas from today.

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