My wife and I are big fans of British panel shows. These are basically game shows, but with celebrities (mostly comedians) where the points don’t matter but the laughs certainly do. If you watch any panel show for any length of time, you’ll run into Jimmy Carr. He’s regularly been a guest on shows like QI and Would I Lie to You, and he seemingly hosts every other panel show you can find, including 8 Out of 10 Cats, 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, The Big Fat Quiz, Last One Laughing, and probably a dozen more I haven’t seen.
Buy Fackham HallHe makes a great host as he’s very welcoming, is able to keep everything on track (mostly, these are comedy shows, so allowing the guests to go a little off the rails makes for good TV), and he’s very funny. His stand-up routines are basically tossing off one-liners, and this works well in a panel show environment. When the guests get quiet, Carr can always rattle off a few hilarious riffs.
But if I’m being honest, this is exactly the reason I don’t really care for Jimmy Carr’s stand-up specials. My favorite comedians are ones that tell stories, or allow their jokes to build upon each other. I can find individual one-liners to be funny, but after a while I get bored.
I’m the same with comedies. I don’t tend to like movies that just throw jokes at the wall, hoping something sticks. I’m not a comedy nerd. I don’t care about joke density. I’d rather there be an interesting story. I prefer the comedy to come organically from the characters.
Which is why when I’d heard Carr had co-created (with Patrick Carr) and co-written (with Carr, Tim Inman, and the Dawson Brothers) a parody of Downtown Abbey-style historical dramas, I was none too keen. The trailers did make me laugh, but they were full of the type of comedy I tend to stay away from – silly, lowbrow, crass, and rapid-fire.
But my wife likes silly comedies, and we’d recently enjoyed the new Naked Gun movie, so I happily sat down with her to watch. For the first ten minutes or so I was starting to regret that decision. The jokes were a plenty, but not all that funny, and the punchlines were too easy to spot.
For example, there is a scene where a young woman is driving down a country lane; coming towards her is a man on a bicycle. They stare at each other as the camera slows down; romantic music plays over the scene. I muttered “crash” under my breath as I knew they would smash into each other. And they did. After a few minutes of meet/cute, she apologized to him, and promised she’d pay more attention to where she was going. I again muttered “crash” for I knew she was going to walk into something. And she did—she stumbled over a tree.
Those aren’t bad gags, just obvious ones. The film is full of that kind of thing – jokes you can see coming from miles away. I wasn’t mad at the film for this. I can find those kinds of jokes amusing (and lord knows I’ve made more than a few of them myself), but it isn’t the style of comedy I truly love. I settled myself in for a night of mild enjoyment and slight tedium.
But then something happened. Somewhere after that, I got onto the film’s wavelength. I don’t know if the jokes got better or if I just lowered my standards, but I found myself laughing out loud rather than smiling with amusement, and then I was cackling with hilarity.
Not all the jokes landed. Some I could still spot before the punchline hit, some were too crude for my taste, but plenty of them tickled my funny bone. It helps that there are a lot of them. This film is a joke factory. It barrages you with silly one-liners and slapstick comedy, it calls back to previous jokes, and it throws in sight gags in the background. If you don’t like one joke, you’ll get another one you’ll love two seconds later.
That woman who hit the young man is Rose Davenport (Thomasin McKenzie), the second oldest child of Lord Davenport (Damian Lewis) and Lady Davenport (Katherine Waterson). When their oldest child, Poppy (Emma Laird), runs away with a manure salesman, it falls on Rose to marry someone appropriate and thus save Fackham Hall (if you say it in a certain British accent, it comes out like “Fuck’em All” which probably tells you all you need to know about how high-minded this comedy is).
Rose detests the man her family has set her up with, Archibald Davenport (Tom Felton), and instead falls in love with that man she nearly ran over. He is Eric Noone (Ben Radcliffe), an orphan and thief who was sent to Fackham Hall to deliver a message. When he’s mistaken for the new hall boy, he immediately jumps into the role, figuring there will be lots of stuff for him to steal.
When a murder happens on the estate, Inspector Watt (Tom Goodman-Hill) is called in to investigate (giving the film plenty of opportunity to spoof films such as Gosford Park and numerous Poirot adaptations).
A whole lot of silliness ensues.
I wish I’d seen this in a packed theater. This type of comedy works even better amongst a group of people laughing their arses off. I still laughed mine off sitting at home with just my wife. One of the nice things about owning it on Blu-ray is the ability to watch it again and again. I’m sure I missed a thousand jokes the first time around I was laughing so much; it will be a treat to try and catch them all.
Fackham Hall isn’t a great movie by any means. It isn’t even the world’s greatest comedy. But it is very funny and very silly, and the world could use more of that right now. With this and The Naked Gun, I’m thrilled this kind of movie spoof is making a comeback. It might not be my favorite type of film to watch, but it might be what I need.
Extras on this Blu-ray released by Bleeker Street and Decal Releasing include a bunch of deleted scenes, some of which are quite funny, but most of which I can see why they left on the cutting room floor.
