Anyone watching anything on HBO Max in the past month has probably gotten a bumper ad at the beginning of whatever they were watching for “Fackham Hall,” a comedic spoof of Edwardian period dramas like “Downton Abbey.” After seeing about 1,000 ads about it before HBO Max finally aired the new episode of “The Pitt,” I decided I should at least give it a try. “Fackham Hall” does deliver comedy in spades. The humor is very much in the style of the works of Mel Brooks (“Blazing Saddles,” “Young Frankenstein” and “The Producers”), focusing on comedic bits over the story, which admittedly isn’t for everyone, but I did find it instantly funny.
The story follows Rose Davenport (Thomasin McKenzie) as she is pushed into marriage with her cousin Archibald Davenport (Tom Felton) so that her family can stay in their family home, Fackham Hall. But when her father turns up dead, everyone starts suspecting the servant boy (Ben Radcliffe), whom she is secretly in love with, of murdering her father. Rose has to choose between her family and love, as well as between her social class and the man she loves.
A very cheesy premise that knows it’s cheesy and actively makes fun of it at every turn. Everything about this movie knows exactly what it is, and it’s incredible. There were only a couple of jokes I did not enjoy, most of which were repeats of earlier jokes in the film. The name Fackham Hall (which, when said in a British accent, sounds a bit like an expletive) is only really funny three to four times compared to the 15 or so times it is said in the movie.
The names of the Davenport’s dead sons (John, Paul, George and Ringo) work as a visual gag in the opening scene, but when it’s repeated by Lord Davenport (Damian Lewis) later in the film, I found it felt a bit flat when said out loud. I also found that the repetition of gags made it feel like the film didn’t really trust the audience to remember the jokes, which made it feel like the writers could come up with only a couple of jokes and didn’t want the audience to know. It also couldn’t decide if it wanted to be “Downton Abbey” or an Agatha Christie spoof, though it’s able to thread the needle between the two of them pretty well.
Though McKenzie was really good, her male co-lead, Radcliffe, felt flat; he was just a pretty face and really stood out against the other stronger performances in the film. All the rest of the actors seem to know exactly what movie they’re in and understand the comedic energy to a tee, making the disparity between their energy and Radcliffe’s incredibly jarring. I also initially didn’t realize Tom Felton was in the film, and he plays a rich, entitled British aristocrat; unfortunately, I think he had a lot more charm as a child in “Harry Potter” than he does now in his mid-30s. But maybe it’s just his recent run in “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” that just left an incredibly bad taste in my mouth; either way, he’s not in the movie for very long, so it’s fairly easy to ignore.
But overall, I found “Fackham Hall” really interesting and underrated, as I haven’t seen many others talk about it despite its initial release in December 2025. Now that it’s finally on HBO Max, I definitely believe it’s worth checking out if the premise sounds interesting to you because it executes it incredibly well.
