Enjoyable melodrama of a tumultuous time

IN 1947 New Delhi, Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India, arrives with his wife and daughter to oversee the transition of Britain's Indian Empire to independence after 300 years under colonial rule.

"Freedom is coming!" exults a local lad.

Yes, but with an independent India came the division of the subcontinent to create the Muslim state of Pakistan. An estimated 14 million people were consequently displaced and more than a million died in one of the world's largest refugee crises.

The historical drama Viceroy's House by British-Punjabi filmmaker Gurinder Chadha, featuring Downton Abbey's Hugh Bonneville and Gillian Anderson as Lord and Lady Mountbatten, unfolds the events of these end days inside the Viceroy's House. Through the eponymous grand residence the Partition and all its religious conflicts are …