Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Fackham Hall’ on HBO Max, a sublimely stupid gag-a-second spoof of British period dramas
Those of you who were disappointed by Downton Abbey’s blatant lack of chamber-pot gags would do well to check out Fackham Hall (now streaming on HBO Max), a Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker-style spoof of buttoned-up British period dramas in the Masterpiece Theatre and Merchant-Ivory vein. Comic/TV personality Jimmy Carr and the Dawson Bros. conceived and wrote the joke-in-every-frame yukfest that stuffs lowbrow humor into a stuffy highbrow concept, featuring a game-for-anything cast led by Thomasin McKenzie, Damian Lewis, and Katherine Waterston. And as is the case with genre piss-takers like this, if half the jokes land, the movie’s pretty much a success – and here I’ll share what I tallied on my handheld funnybit clicker.
FACKHAM HALL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: OK, I didn’t tally every joke. For this type of movie, it’d stress the ol’ tendonitis way too much. It’s 1931, and Hayley Mills narrates how the Davenport family is finding a way to endure Great Depression hardship by continuing to live in its sprawling aristocratic estate, Fackham Hall, with its legion of servants and square footage to rival an airport, as it has for 400 years now: like the outside world barely exists. The gate outside the manor reads INCESTUS AD INFINITUM – sounds about right. Upstairs we have Lord Humphrey Davenport (Lewis), his hollowed-out wife, Lady Prudence (Waterston), and their scandalously unmarried daughter Rose (McKenzie), an outright dried-up corpse of an old maid at age 23. Downstairs we have head butler Cyril (Tim McMullan) and housekeeper Mrs. McAllister (Anna Maxwell Martin) leading the servant class, which could rise up and turn their flimsy oppressors into beefy roasts if they didn’t Know Their Place so acutely.
Rather upsettingly, we cut away from the luxe-bubble to Central London, where all the hideously disgusting normal people live. Here, we meet Eric Noone (Ben Radcliffe) – pronounced “no one,” natch – a dashing pickpocket who grew up in an orphanage. He’s sent on an errand to deliver a letter to Lord Davenport, so he hops on his bike and cranks it to Fackham Hall, where he’s nearly killed when Rose hits him with her sedan. They’re instantly smitten, of course. THIS is what true love is like, not whatever it is Rose’s sister Poppy (Emma Laird) endures in her engagement to their first cousin Archibald Davenport (Tom Felton), who’s more than happy to assume the family responsibility of making sure women remain uneducated and submissive. See, all of Rose and Poppy’s brothers – George, Paul, John and Ringo – died, and deeply entrenched idiotic rules and traditions dictate that the only way for Fackham to remain in the family is for Lord Davenport to have a male heir. Inbreeding it is, then! And one can’t help but wonder, if British high society regarded women as something other than gussied-up breeding machines, which it obviously doesn’t, and allowed hyphenated married names, would she be Poppy Davenport-Davenport?
Well, we won’t find out. It’s the wedding day, with J.R.R. Tolkien (taking notes for some ridiculous novel he’s working on) and the Bechdel Sisters (making sure female representation occurs fully in the context of male authority) in attendance. Poppy ditches Archibald at the altar to run away with the local shit-hauler – no, really, he has a cart full of manure – which leaves all the pressure on poor Rose to marry her cousin. But she’s in love with Eric, who’s been hired at Fackham as a “hall boy,” which I think is a formal title for someone who replaces soiled handkerchiefs with fresh ones. As poor Rose is torn between dutiful tradition and the yearnings of her heart, we enjoy a little hunting excursion (Archibald is possibly the world’s most terrible shot), Rose and Archibald sniping at each other during an opulent dinner (“Sick burn, bitch!” one 900-year-old auntie says of one of Rose’s quips) and a foray into murder-mystery territory complete with a detective (Tom Goodman-Hill) wearing a mustache the size of a turkey vulture. Full disclosure: I laughed at so very much of this dumb shit.
Photo: Everett Collection
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Prolly could’ve called this movie A Room with a Spew or Howard’s Bend Over. We’re firmly in The Naked Gun territory here, classic or reboot, the latter of which seems to have led the wave of a new batch of spoofs, with a new Scary Movie and a Spaceballs sequel pending.
Performance Worth Watching: A wide-eyed McKenzie – so terrific in Leave No Trace and Last Night in Soho – establishes her comedy bona-fides with spot-on comic timing and a willingness to fully commit to this silliness.
Sex And Skin: A bare butt used to park a bike; boner through pants; a pixelated exposed schwantz.
Photo: Everett Collection
Our Take: I’m convinced that movies like this aren’t necessarily about inspiring laughter, and more about being as stupid as possible. Puns, who’s-on-first-type exchanges, slapstick, sight gags – the fruit is low-hanging, and any opportunity to grab it is indulged. That’s not criticism: If the laughs come, so be it. Fackham Hall – a title you need to say in a cockney accent in order to nail the joke – doesn’t reach new levels of moronitude, but it definitely maintains baseline puerility with impressive consistency via dumber-than-dumb jokes like, “How’d you sleep?” “By lying on my bed and closing my eyes.” What does it say about me that I cackled long and loud at that one? Please don’t answer that.
But it does inspire me to insist that you’re not too good for this level of asinine comedy, which in this particular case is rooted in social commentary. Obvious satirical commentary, mind you – on the aristocracy, privilege and class warfare in Britain; targets don’t get much bigger – but it’s righteous enough, its nasty little jabs at bluebloods hitting home more often than not. Granted, Downton Abbey never really took itself that seriously, but the conservatories-and-gowns genre was overripe for a vicious rogering, so Carr (who plays a vicar with a propensity for emphasizing innuendo in his devotions) and co. grabbed the baton and raced for, if not gold, then a good, solid bronze medal. If anything, Fackham Hall could, and maybe should, be much nastier. It’s OK! Clueless self-absorbed rich people deserve it! Who’s gonna argue that point?
Our Call: Surely you’ll find something to laugh at in Fackham Hall – and don’t call me “Fackham.” STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.
