Written and created by Academy Award-winner Julian Fellowes, Downton Abbey has garnered a plethora of praise from critics and fans worldwide. The acclaimed ensemble cast brings to life all the drama and intrigue of the inhabitants of Downton Abbey, the lavish English country manor, home to the Earls of Grantham since 1772. A Golden Globe and multi-Emmy Award-winning series, following the Crawley family and their servants from pre-war England through the storms of World War I, and into the social upheaval of England in the Roaring 1920s as the lives of its inhabitants are shaped by romance, heartbreak, scandals, rumors, blackmail, and betrayal.
“Compulsively watchable from the get-go.” – Variety
“An instant classic.” – The New York Times
Starring Elizabeth McGovern, Hugh Bonneville, Maggie Smith and Maggie Smith Michelle Dockery.
Set between 1912 and 1925, Downton Abbey spans the Edwardian Era, World War I, and the Interwar era.
Shown on PBS Masterpiece Theatre.
Note: The first series of seven episodes explores the lives of the fictional Crawley family and their servants beginning the day after the historic sinking of the RMS Titanic, April 1912. The second series comprised eight episodes and ran from the Battle of the Somme in 1916 to the 1918 flu pandemic. Series Three of Downton Abbey is composed of eight episodes in addition to a Christmas special. It spans through the year 1920, and ends in 1921. Series four continued the story of the Crawley family and their servants and covers February 1922 into the spring/summer of 1923. Series five covers the months from February to December 1924. Series six picks up six months after the end of Series 5, in 1925. The final episode ends on New Year’s Eve, 1925.
Highclere Castle in north Hampshire is used for exterior shots of Downton Abbey and most of the interior filming. Outdoor scenes are filmed in the village of Bampton in Oxfordshire. First World War trench warfare scenes in France were filmed in a specially constructed replica battlefield for period war scenes near the village of Akenham in rural Suffolk. Alnwick Castle, in Northumberland, was the filming location used for Brancaster Castle in the 2014 Christmas special, which included filming in Alnwick Castle’s State Rooms, as well as on the castle’s grounds, and at the nearby semi-ruined Hulne Abbey on the Duke of Northumberland’s parklands in Alnwick.