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Filming has secretly started on a new series of Downton Abbey. The period drama – the last episode of which was aired a little over eight years ago – is making a surprise comeback in a seventh series. Bosses hoped to be able to bring back some of the big name actors such as Hugh Bonneville, Michelle Dockery, Elizabeth McGovern and Joanne Froggatt who appeared in the previous six seasons and two movie spin-offs. While it is not known if all of them have signed up, chiefs are said to be 'thrilled' with their casting. The return of the show,...

Downton Abbey star Dan Stevens shocked those in the studio of the BBC news magazine program The ONE Show, when he compared embattled U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson to disgraced former President Richard Nixon. Stevens was the guest on the Wednesday edition of the program. Hosts Alex Jones—no relation to the American Alex Jones—and Jermaine Jenas set up an introduction to a clip from the upcoming limited series Gaslit about Nixon's Watergate scandal that ultimately led to his resigning the presidency. Stevens appears in the eight-episode series as John Dean.

PBS pledge break time. Showing the series. Retirement/coronavirus is doing it to me. It seems America is fascinated with the Brits and their 'proper' behavior among the uppers. Go back 100 years, throw in TODAY's social discrepancies and you've got quite a formula. The castle backdrop and fashion will get the ladies hooked. I'm watching but not getting caught up in it.

A week ago I was having a conversation in the Fox News green room about the Downton Abbey movie with ...well, go on, guess: Tucker? Kilmeade? No, it was Tyrus. A hulking ex-professional wrestler who could crush the average effete English earl between his toes doesn't seem the most obvious fan of Downton's doings, and we disagreed on Lady Mary, for whom he has an intense loathing and to whose icy bitchery I've warmed up over the years. But it does suggest the broad appeal of Julian Fellowes' "franchise", and helps explain why, franchise-wise, Downton Abbey clobbered the latest Rambo...

A big-screen transfer for Downton Abbey has been rumoured for almost as long as the show has been on television. But on Friday the movie was confirmed, with creator Julian Fellowes scripting, The Book Thief’s Brian Percival to direct and Universal Studios to distribute. Production will start later this summer, with a release next year likely. Plot details remain under wraps, but it is expected the action will pick up directly from the last season’s finale, which was set in 1926. “When the television series drew to a close it was our dream to bring the millions of global fans...

If you were to draw a Venn diagram of two sets, with one representing male police officers and the other representing fans of “Downton Abbey,” I suspect the overlap would be vanishingly small. Some might consider this unmanly, but I’m proud to admit my membership in that sliver of humanity, and I will be a bit downcast Sunday evening as the show fades to black for the last time. Equally downcast will be Mrs. Dunphy, who perhaps represents a more typical demographic among the millions of people who today wonder how they will spend their wintertime Sunday evenings from now...

Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes has blasted the BBC, claiming it is ‘living in a Seventies bubble’ and that, despite its public subsidy, it shows no sympathy for people who do not share its metropolitan world view. The hit ITV series won this year’s festive ratings battle with 6.9 million fans tuning in to its Christmas Day finale, and today Lord Fellowes has used a fiercely critical interview in The Mail on Sunday’s Event magazine to say that he would not have wanted to work with the Corporation on the drama. ‘The great thing about making Downton Abbey with ITV...

t was Downton Abbey’s Christmas special and its last ever episode – a potent combination we knew would guarantee a happy ending. In fact there were dozens of them with everyone living happily ever after, even Edith. Writer Julian Fellowes bowed out swathing every scene with even more cascading violins than usual and enough syrupy, soapy, sentimentality to make the most devoted fan gag.

The doors to Downton Abbey are finally closing. Carnival Films and ITV have announced that there will be no return to the famous home of the Crawley family after the sixth season airs, as they want to end on a high. Downton Abbey has been a huge international success, selling to broadcasters around the world, but its ratings in Britain had started flagging. NBC Universal, which owns the production company behind the show, said in an internal note to staff that the long-running drama was ‘approaching its natural conclusion’. The internal note, seen by the Daily Mail, said: ‘Whilst we...

"Downton Abbey" is losing its Dowager Countess. Maggie Smith, who plays the sharp-tongued Violet on the beloved PBS drama, told the Times of London Sunday that the upcoming sixth season will be her last. Perhaps more alarming to fans, if that’s possible, was Smith’s broad hint that this could also be the finale for the show itself. "They say this is the last one, and I can't see how it could go on," Smith told the Times. “I mean, I certainly can't keep going ... To my knowledge, I must be 110 by now. We're into the late 1920s."

I’ve been plowing through season five of “Downton Abbey,” the saga of the aristocratic Crawley family and their servants in early 20th-century Britain, which premieres on Sunday, Jan. 4, on PBS’ “Masterpiece Classic,” and a few thoughts have come to mind. They’re not particularly organized, but here goes (warning, if you want to remain utterly spoiler-free, you may want to stop now. I don’t tell, but I do hint).Creator and writer Julian Fellowes is a Catholic, and while not born to British aristocracy, he married into it (meeting his wife while having an affair with someone else’s), and has become...

Socialism has come to “Downton Abbey.”The year is 1924 and Ramsey McDonald has just been elected as prime minister. With the Labor Party’s antipathy toward the cosseted likes of the Crawley family, Sir Robert (Hugh Bonneville) is having the upper-crust equivalent of a meltdown in Sunday night’s fifth-season premiere of the Julian Fellowes drama.Wearing a zip-up sweatshirt and corduroys, a very jolly Bonneville sits down at the Lamb’s Club in midtown to discuss the momentous changes that await the Crawleys, as the world clock brings them closer to the Great Depression of 1929.

In a recent response to my essay, “Lady Edith and Abortion Rights,” my friend and colleague Marguerite Spencer has challenged both my literary character analysis of Lady Edith—from the television show Downton Abbey—and my staunchly pro-life stance against abortions committed for purely social reasons. I leave to fans of Downton the question of whether the Lady Edith character is a self-focused privileged brat or a compassionate tragic heroine (or perhaps some of both). Reasonable people certainly can differ on such matters! I also leave to readers’ judgment whether Spencer has fairly characterized my position. In this essay, I would like...

When it comes to green gentry liberalism, think of an Americanized version of the PBS hit—where everyone knows his or her place, and our betters look best. Last week was a good week for natural gas, but a bad one for green gentry liberalism. John Podesta, a veteran of the Clinton White House who is once again a presidential adviser, tried to explain some energy facts of life to the true-believing liberal base. Still, it’s unclear if Podesta’s intended audience was listening, and that willful blindness may cost the Democrats control of the Senate. Podesta warned that opposition to natural...

As Wendy Davis’s campaign for Texas governor flounders, Democrats in Washington have begun to cast their eyes elsewhere for a good news story in the solid-red South. They believe they may have found that in Georgia, where a combination of demographic trends and a slate full of famous political names is giving Democrats in the state an unfamiliar feeling: Hope. Topping the ticket (which Republicans have tagged as "Downton Abbey Democrats" for children seeking their ancestors' titles) is Jason Carter, the 38 year-old state senator and grandson of former president Jimmy Carter, who is challenging Republican Gov. Nathan Deal.

Wait, did the season finale of “Downton” leave us with more questions than it answered? Here’s what we still don’t know: Did Bates kill Green? Will Mary choose Blake or Gillingham or Napier? (Okay, probably not Napier). Will Edith ever locate Michael Gregson? What dirt does Barrow have on Baxter? (And, related, why do the names of so many characters on “Downton” begin with B? Bates, Blake, Barrow, Baxter, Bunting, Branson, Braithwaite. I’m out of breath). I doubt the last question will be answered and it looks like we’ll have to wait for next season to find out about the...

Many “Downton Abbey” watchers are nostalgia gluttons who grieved when Lord Grantham lost his fortune in Canadian railroad shares. There are, however, a discerning few whose admirable American sensibilities caused them to rejoice at Grantham’s loss: “Now perhaps this amiable but dilettantish toff will get off his duff and get a job.” This drama’s verisimilitude extends to emphasizing that his lordship had a fortune to squander only because he married an American heiress. By battening on what they disdained, this republic’s commercial culture, many British aristocrats could live beyond their inherited means — actual work being, of course, unthinkable.

Six months after Matthew's death, Mary is mired in grief, and the family and servants try to help her face a future without Matthew. Meanwhile, both Tom Branson and Carson face figures from their pasts, and Edith experiments with modernism. The much-loved cast of Downton Abbey Season 4 includes Dame Maggie Smith, Elizabeth McGovern, Hugh Bonneville, Michelle Dockery, Jim Carter, Joanne Froggatt, Penelope Wilton, and a host of others, with guest stars Shirley MacLaine and Paul Giamatti. Written and created by Julian Fellowes, Downton Abbey, Season 4 marks the return of one of television's most beloved and anticipated drama series...

Our friends at PBS and Masterpiece have given BuzzFeed an exclusive look at five images from Season 4 of the British period drama, which returns to Masterpiece on January 5, 2014. Baby Sybil! Here's one. See the others at link. United in grief? Poor Mary and Branson both lost their significant others, Matthew and Sybil, during Season 3 of Downton Abbey. Now both single parents, they’ll have to raise their young children on their own. Oh, and with the help of a fleet of servants.

Okay, I'm normally a political and news poster..but am searching for some new BBC shows to addict myself to post Downton Abbey. Hoping Freepers can help. There was a thread about this a while back. After realizing that the Brits are light years better than us for turning out watchable, absorbing and well acted, directed and produced "who dunnits", and as I am on a political sabbatical for obvious reasons.. Here's my completed viewing list over the last three months: 1. Prime Suspect: Helen Mirren 2. Foley's War: all except the new ones that aren't out yet. 3. George Gently...Seasons...