After six series and a hugely successful spin-off film, ‘s downstairs staff finally get a proper taste of the glamour enjoyed by the upstairs characters in the highly anticipated second movie Downton Abbey: A New Era. 

And no one deserves it more than Britain’s favourite married servants Mr and Mrs Carson (nee Hughes), the loyal butler and head housekeeper to the Crawley family – although they get it in very different ways. 

The first movie, released in 2019, four years after the TV series ended, was a box-office smash, raking in more than £150 million. But it left us with a cliffhanger ending – the Dowager Countess, played by Dame , was told she may not have long to live, raising fears her pithy putdowns wouldn’t grace this sequel. 

But fans will be pleased to know she’s back along with the other Downton stalwarts including Hugh Bonneville as Lord Grantham, Elizabeth McGovern as his wife Cora, Michelle Dockery as their daughter Lady Mary, Sophie McShera as assistant cook Daisy and Lesley Nicol as head cook Mrs Patmore. 

The film, set in 1928, nine months after the first movie, involves a trip to the South of France and a surprise wedding, and sees a Hollywood film crew take over the abbey.Indeed it’s the Dowager Countess who instigates the jaunt to the Med when she casually reveals she’s inherited a villa from an old suitor. 

‘They’d better be warned, the British are coming,’ teases Carson, one of only three staff permitted to pack their bags for a stay at the Villa of the Doves on the French Riviera for the ‘grandest escape of the year’.

The villa is luxurious enough to give the abbey a run for its money, and the Crawley family spend the trip zooming along the coastline in speedboats, schmoozing new lovers on the sands and attending extravagant bashes.But how does stickler Carson cope with the upheaval? 

‘Carson can’علاج CAR T CELL cope with electricity or a fridge, never mind the French,’ says Jim Carter, who’s played the grumpy butler since the TV series began in 2010. 

‘So going to France, which is full of French people with dubious eating habits, is tricky for him.He’s appalled at what they eat because he’s old-fashioned in that way. 

‘There’s a bedroom scene with Mrs Hughes [the character decided to retain her original surname while still working] before he goes, where she’s starting to fall asleep and I’m reading – in horror – a travel guide to France.That’s about as sexy as we get. 

‘You hear Carson talking about how he can’t believe what he has to go through, having to teach these French servants how to behave. While he’s there he insists things will happen in the English manner, so he refuses to acknowledge the heat and ends up sweating profusely in his starchy clothes.’ 

You might wonder why Carson has been dispatched to France, given that usually it’s only the maids and valets who travel with the Crawleys when they depart for holidays in Scotland.