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Fackham Hall | Official Green Band Trailer | Bleecker Street / Downton Abbey spoof is fast, funny and throwaway
Review
Fackham
Hall review – Downton Abbey spoof is fast, funny and throwaway
Period
drama parody has some decent and often smart gags and benefits from a game cast
including Damian Lewis and Thomasin McKenzie
Adrian
Horton
Fri 5 Dec
2025 23.28 CET
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/dec/05/fackham-hall-movie-review
Perhaps
it’s the feeling of end times in the air: after years of inactivity, spoofs are
making a comeback. This summer saw the resurgence of the lighthearted genre,
which at its best sends up the pretensions of overly serious genre with a
barrage of pitched cliches, sight gags and stupid-clever puns. The Naked Gun,
starring Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson in a spoof of a buddy-cop spoof,
opened to moderate box office success; the hapless rock band dialed it back up
to 11 in Spinal Tap II: The End Continues. Reboots of the horror spoof
gold-standard Scary Movie and the Mel Brooks Star Wars rip Spaceballs were
greenlit, and there were rumors of a return for international man of mystery
Austin Powers. Unserious times, it seems, beget appetite for knowingly unserious,
joke-dense, refreshingly shallow fun.
The
latest of these goofy parodies, which premieres on the beyond-parody day that
Fifa awarded Donald Trump an inaugural peace prize and Netflix announced its
plan to buy Warner Bros, is Fackham Hall, a Downton Abbey spoof that pokes at
the very pokeable pretensions of gilded British period dramas. (Yes, Fackham
rhymes with a crass kiss-off to the aristocracy.) Co-written by British Irish
comedian and TV presenter Jimmy Carr and directed by Jim O’Hanlon, Fackham Hall
has plenty of material to work with – the historical soap’s grand finale just
premiered in September, 15 years after Julian Fellowes’s series started going
upstairs-downstairs with ludicrous portent – and wastes none of it. From
ludicrous start (servants rolling joints for the household and responding to
calls from the “masturbatorium”) to ludicrous finish (someone manages to marry
a second cousin rather than a first!), this enjoyable silver-spoon romp packs
all of its 97 minutes with jokes and bits ranging from the puerile to the
genuinely funny, proving that there may yet be more to wring from eat-the-rich
satire.
Like
Downton, Fackham Hall is a pastiche of very self-important rich people and very
obsequious servants, of effete masculinity and feminine gamesmanship. What is
life as a British aristocrat, if not to drink tea and scheme others’ marriages?
Having lost their four sons in four separate tragic accidents, the feckless
Lord Davenport (an enjoyably affected Damian Lewis) and his anti-reading wife,
Lady Davenport (Katherine Waterston), are left to focus on their daughters.
Poppy (Emma Laird), the younger sister, has accomplished the family goal of
finding the right first cousin to marry, lest the manor drift out of family
control. But when Poppy bails on a future of know-nothing conversation with
cousin Archibald (a perfectly smarmy Tom Felton) for a simpleton, the family’s
hopes land on the unmarried Rose (Thomasin McKenzie) – at 23, a “dried-up husk
of a woman”, according to her mother – whose belief in such things as female
autonomy leads her to detest Archibald.
Carr
fares much better joking about the suffocating expectations on early
20th-century women often mined for self-serious drama – poor Rose just wants to
read books (the scandal!) in but One Shade of Grey – than joking about women,
as in his disastrous recent standup. The trope of respectable, enviable
femininity are the stars here, and often make for the best punching bags; when
plucky pickpocket Eric Noone (the dashing Ben Radcliffe), hand-selected from
his London orphanage by a mysterious stranger to deliver a letter to Fackham,
collides into Rose, he is inevitably sidetracked by an “incredibly beautiful
woman with a kind of carefree essence that makes men grateful to be alive!”
As
befitting an intentionally ridiculous spoof, the plot is secondary to the bits,
which Carr keeps delivering at an amiably humorous clip, with a solid three
guffaws in the mix. There is a murder, and an incompetent investigation. The
forbidden romance between Noone (pronounced “no one”) and Rose, played by
Radcliffe and McKenzie as just the right balance of bumbling and beguiling,
imperils the aristocrats’ best-laid plans. Genre skewering, pratfalls and
spoof-staple wordplay abound. (“I’m here for the murder,” says the investigator
(Tom Goodman-Hill). “I’m afraid someone’s already done it! But come in anyway,”
says the butler.)
It’s all
in lighthearted fun, though that itself has limitations. The dialed-up
silliness of a spoof can wear quickly, and the mileage on this particular
variety runs out somewhere between sketch and feature. At a certain point, you
might wish to return to the world of (very slight) reason. But you have to
respect a sincere commitment to the artform – if we’re going to amuse ourselves
to death, might as well laugh at it.
Fackham
Hall is out in US cinemas now, in the UK on 12 December and in Australia on 19
February
Friday, 5 December 2025
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Inside Trump’s Push to Make the White House Ballroom as Big as Possible
Inside
Trump’s Push to Make the White House Ballroom as Big as Possible
President
Trump’s ever-growing vision has caused tension with contractors. His architect
has taken a step back as the president personally manages the project.
Luke
Broadwater
By Luke
Broadwater
Luke
Broadwater is a White House correspondent. He reported from Washington.
Published
Nov. 29, 2025
Updated
Nov. 30, 2025
As
President Trump took a stroll on the White House roof in August, generating
headlines and questions about what he was up to, the man walking beside him was
little noticed.
Wearing
his signature bow tie, James McCrery, a classical architect who runs a small
Washington firm known for its work building Catholic churches, was discussing
how to execute Mr. Trump’s vision for a ballroom on the White House grounds.
Mr.
McCrery’s work has been embraced by conservatives who believe federal buildings
should be designed with an eye toward the grandeur of ancient Greek and Roman
structures. He often talks of how his design work is carried out in service of
God and the church, according to people who have worked with him.
It might
have seemed an odd pairing: a man who designs cathedrals working for a man who
once built casinos, and is now president of the United States.
But
McCrery Architects got to work on the initial drawings for the project,
sketching out a design with high ceilings and arched windows reminiscent of
Versailles’s Hall of Mirrors. It would have the latest security features,
including bulletproof glass. Gold furniture, known to please the president, was
added to the renderings.
It was
flashy enough to impress a man of Mr. Trump’s tastes, while largely matching
the style of the historic White House without overshadowing it.
That’s
when things got tricky.
In
offering up his initial design, Mr. McCrery could not have known that Mr.
Trump’s vision for the project was growing. What started as a 500-seat ballroom
connected to the East Wing grew to 650 seats. Next, he wanted a 999-seat
ballroom, then room for 1,350. Even as Mr. Trump assured the public in July
that the ballroom would not touch the existing structure, he already had
approved plans to demolish the East Wing to make way for something that could
hold several thousand people, according to three people familiar with the
timeline.
The
latest plan, which officials said was still preliminary, calls for a ballroom
much larger than the West Wing and the Executive Mansion. Mr. Trump has said
publicly that he would like a ballroom big enough to hold a crowd for a
presidential inauguration.
The size
of the project was not the only issue raising alarms. Mr. Trump also told
people working on the ballroom that they did not need to follow permitting,
zoning or code requirements because the structure is on White House grounds,
according to three people familiar with his comments. (The firms involved have
insisted on following industry standards.)
In recent
weeks, Mr. McCrery has pulled back from day-to-day involvement in the project,
two people familiar with the matter told The New York Times. They emphasized
that Mr. McCrery was still involved as a consultant on the design and proud to
be working for Mr. Trump.
A White
House official acknowledged that there had been disagreements between Mr. Trump
and Mr. McCrery, a dynamic first reported by the Washington Post.
Through a
representative, Mr. McCrery declined requests for an interview.
This
account of Mr. Trump’s personal drive to undertake one of the most significant
renovations in the history of the White House is based on interviews with five
people with knowledge of the project, most of whom asked for anonymity to
discuss private conversations, along with the president’s own statements and
planning documents released by the White House.
A
Builder’s Dream
For Mr.
Trump, who was a builder for years in New York City and who often brags about
his talents in real estate and construction, the White House renovation is a
dream project.
Mr. Trump
has marveled that he does not need to follow the kind of permitting
requirements that he faced back in New York. He doesn’t need approvals from
anyone, he has told those around him, and can begin any project at the White
House as quickly as he likes.
“‘You’re
the president of the United States, you can do anything you want,’” Mr. Trump
has said he’s been told.
Mr. Trump
has wanted to build a ballroom at the White House for years. During the Obama
administration, he pitched the idea of constructing a $100 million version of
his Mar-a-Lago ballroom. But Obama associates never followed up on his offer, a
slight that has stayed with Mr. Trump.
The
ballroom Mr. Trump is planning now is more than four times as large as the
20,000-square-foot one at Mar-a-Lago.
Aware of
potential resistance to the project, Mr. Trump has pushed to remove any
obstacle that could slow down his vision.
He has
installed his former personal lawyer as the chairman of the National Capital
Planning Commission, which is supposed to review plans for the project. That
lawyer, Will Scharf, has said there was no need to review Mr. Trump’s plans
before he ordered the demolition of the East Wing.
Mr. Trump
has also fired the entire board of the Commission of Fine Arts, an independent
federal agency that was established by Congress to advise the president on
urban planning and historical preservation.
Mr.
Trump’s unilateral approach has raised concerns from the Society of
Architectural Historians, which urged that “such a significant change to a
historic building of this import should follow a rigorous and deliberate design
and review process.”
Mr. Trump
is aware of the criticism that his ballroom plans are too large. He told a
group of donors to the project last month that he didn’t want the new ballroom
to “dwarf anything.” But at the same event, in discussing related plans to
construct a Triumphal Arch, Mr. Trump showed small, medium and large options.
“I happen
to think the large looks by far the best,” he said.
Deep in
the Details
The
contractors working on Mr. Trump’s ballroom — including McCrery Architects,
Clark Construction and AECOM — did not go through the traditional government
bidding process. Instead, Mr. Trump has been personally selecting each
contractor and handling the details of the contracts, including how much the
firm will be paid, people with knowledge of the situation said.
Mr. Trump
selected Mr. McCrery after the architect made his presentation personally in
the Oval Office, emphasizing a design that would be in keeping with the
existing White House. (The building’s original designer, James Hoban, was also
a church architect.)
The
president has also said that the firm excavating the site initially told him
the work would cost $3.2 million, but that he pressured the company to accept
just $2 million.
The short
timetable for the project, which the president has said he wants to be
completed before 2029, has led to some embarrassing mistakes.
The
various plans released so far, including a rushed model made by a contractor,
have included windows that collide into each other and a staircase to nowhere.
Richard
W. Longstreth, an architectural historian and a professor at George Washington
University, noted that the public had yet to see a final design of the
building. He said the ballroom project's success would depend a lot on its
execution.
“I have
nothing against the contemporary use of classical architecture, if it’s done
well,” he said. “And there are people who can do it very well, and others who
cannot.”
The
president initially considered ways to preserve the East Wing, the traditional
offices of the first lady and the entrance to the White House for millions of
Americans on official tours.
McCrery
Architects provided options to build the ballroom as an addition to the East
Wing or construct the new facility over it. But Mr. Trump rejected those plans.
Under the
latest designs, the offices of the first lady would be on the ground floor of
the proposed ballroom, with a main visitor entrance from the East Portico.
“We
started with a much smaller building, and then I realized, we have the land,
let’s do it right,” Mr. Trump said recently to donors, during an event to raise
money for the ballroom project. “And so we built a larger building that can
really hold just about any function that we want.”
Many have
embraced the idea of Mr. Trump’s new ballroom as a benefit to the complex,
pointing out problems with hosting large events in tents on White House
grounds.
Joseph
Malchow, who is on the board of the National Civic Art Society with Mr.
McCrery, said Mr. Trump was leading an effort to restore “classical American
architecture.”
Mr. Trump
has said taxpayers are not on the hook for the ballroom, whose costs have risen
by 50 percent, from $200 million to $300 million. The president has said he
already raised $350 million from donors, including from major tech and crypto
companies, and that businesses pledged to donate all of the steel and air
conditioning.
But that
payment method means going around Congress to fund the project, cutting
legislators out of having any say over its direction.
“The
White House is one of the great buildings in this country. It’s the so-called
people’s palace,” said Richard Guy Wilson, professor emeritus of architectural
history at the University of Virginia. “This new ballroom that’s going up, it’s
gigantic, and unfortunately, it’s going to sort of dominate.”
‘An
Important Designer’
The
ballroom project is Mr. Trump’s latest push to remake the White House in his
own image.
He has
added gold moldings and gold decorations throughout the Oval Office, and gold
ornaments to the Cabinet Room.
He
removed a photo of Hillary Clinton, the former first lady and secretary of
state, and replaced it with an image of his own face colored with the American
flag. He added marble floors and a chandelier to the Palm Room.
He paved
over the Rose Garden grass to add a patio. Along the West Wing colonnade, he
added gold-framed photos of every American president except his predecessor,
Joseph R. Biden Jr., whom he depicted as an autopen.
Mr.
Longstreth noted that many of Mr. Trump’s changes could be undone by future
presidents. “A lot of that is reversible,” he said. “And presidents have often
come in and changed the decoration to a considerable degree.”
Still,
Mr. Trump is showing no signs of stopping. He recently gutted the bathroom in
the Lincoln Bedroom, posting two dozen photos on social media of the
renovation. And he has informally discussed undertaking more projects at the
White House, including more work on the West Wing.
A White
House official said that a large-scale renovation of the West Wing was not
currently under consideration, but that Mr. Trump would be making more changes.
Speaking
of the design plans for the new ballroom, Mr. Trump has said that he likes to
see different proposals, but that he ultimately has the final say.
“I
consider myself an important designer,” Mr. Trump has said.
A
correction was made on Nov. 29, 2025: A previous version of this article
incorrectly identified the federal agency whose board members were fired by
President Trump. It was the Commission of Fine Arts, not the Fine Arts Council.
When we
learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error,
please let us know at nytnews@nytimes.com.Learn more
Luke
Broadwater covers the White House for The Times.
