Skip to footer

Downton Abbey: US viewers have at least two more seasons to come

Downton Abbey: PBS announces that Downton Abbey, the popular drama about the wealthy Crawley family, will return for a 5th season. The 4th season is currently airing on in Britain and will come to PBS January 5.

|
Joss Barratt/PBS/AP
'Downton Abbey' stars Hugh Bonneville (l.) as Lord Robert Grantham and Jim Carter as butler Charles Carson (r.).
|
PBS/AP
A new survey of 166,000 Britons found that instead of the three traditional classes – upper, middle, and working – that are prominent in shows like 'Downton Abbey,' shown at left, now there are seven distinct strata.
|
Nick Briggs/PBS/AP
'Downton Abbey' stars Maggie Smith.
|
Keith Bedford/Reuters
'Downton Abbey' will feature a guest turn by actor Paul Giamatti.
  • By Associated Press

| NEW YORK

Fans of "Downton Abbey," rejoice! There will be another season yet of period romance and upstairs-downstairs drama at the country estate.

"Masterpiece" executive producer Rebecca Eaton says Downton fans in the US and Britain can "rest easy knowing that a fifth season is on the way." The fourth season is already airing overseas, and will return to PBS in January.

The British channel ITV announced Sunday that it has commissioned a fifth season of the popular television show, a costume drama about a British aristocratic family and their servants in the 1910s and 1920s. As before, the new series will be written by Julian Fellowes. Michelle Dockery, Hugh Bonneville, Elizabeth McGovern, and Jim Carter are among its stars.

ITV said the fourth season's holiday special, which will air in Britain on Christmas Day, will feature Paul Giamatti, who joins the cast as Cora's playboy brother, Harold, and Shirley MacLaine, who will reprise her role as Cora's mother Martha Levinson.

The show, which debuted in 2010, has won millions of fans in Britain, the US and beyond. 

Earlier this year, more than 24 million viewers watched the third season of the series in the US, making it the most-watched drama in PBS history.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Downton Abbey: US viewers have at least two more seasons to come
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Latest-News-Wires/2013/1111/Downton-Abbey-US-viewers-have-at-least-two-more-seasons-to-come
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe