After six seasons of television, a previous film, and a cultural shift that has prompted some of the show’s original viewers to regard the characters’ generational wealth with revulsion and glee, as though it were a wheel of rotten Stilton, “Downton Abbey: A New Era” asserts that change has struck at the Grantham family’s manor. The stately sequence that began in 1912 with the sinking of the Titanic is now entering its conclusion in the late 1920s. On the horizon, a rough sea of modernity is forming. To remain afloat, this pleasant sequel decides to ever so slightly democratize itself: The upstairs-downstairs distinction that has long separated estate owners from their stewards begins to leak.

The most memorable part of Downton Abbey’s roof is the clock, which motivates Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) to rent the cash-strapped estate to a team shooting silent film producers of “kin-ema,” as Lady Mary’s father, Robert (Hugh Bonneville), calls it, mockingly mispronouncing the name of the art form. (The moviemaking plot point may have been inspired by real-life: The franchise’s filming location, Highclere Castle, which resembles a vampire bat’s underbite, opened its doors to the show after Geordie Herbert, the Eighth Earl of Carnarvon and Queen Elizabeth II’s godson, recognized that many of its rooms were decaying.)

The director, Julian Fellowes, and the “Downton Abbey” creator who also wrote “A New Era,” go on to have their own actors compete for who can deliver the best meta-zingers about the profession. On seeing that her bloodline hasn’t earned its living, snooty Dowager Countess Maggie Smith spits, “I’d prefer to work at the mine.” The obvious reply is that because of her lineage, she has not worked a day in her life which would be an insult against Dame Tuppence Middleton and Allen Leech as devoted parents striving to keep their children from becoming unproductive rich people.

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