"It's good to remind people, love is love," says Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes. And more than 15 million viewers in the U.S. and U.K. are having a love affair with the palace-size hit, which has reinvigorated period drama and earned raves around the world (100 countries have acquired rights to air the show). Far from a sophomore slump, Season 2 of the sumptuous series about life among the British gentry and their servants during World War I has broadened the story's scope to take in the violence of the battlefields and the impact of the conflict on the residents both upstairs and down.
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Who says you can't go home again? Not that any of us ever lived in a place as grand and as teeming with character — highborn and low, selfless and treacherous — as Downton Abbey.
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When Downton Abbey returns for its second season on Jan. 8, 2012 on PBS, the action will pick up two years after that fated garden party in which the Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) announced that England was at war with Germany.
During Sunday's preview of the hit British series, executive producer Gareth Neame confirmed that the action in the seven-episode second season will take place over two years, just like the first season. "The new series is a similar sort of span," he says. "We start in 1916. The war will come to a conclusion within this series, and the final episodes is the time after the war."
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Emilia Clarke might play a warrior princess with platinum blonde hair on Game of Thrones, but fans who approach her often want to talk about her on-screen husband instead.
"Normally the comments are not about me at all, but, 'My goodness, your husband is big!'" she tells TVGuide.com. We can't blame them. As the delicately beautiful Daenerys Targaryen, Clarke is a sharp contrast to Jason Momoa, the 6-foot-5 actor who plays the eyeliner-wearing, bare-chested Dothraki warlord, Khal Drogo.
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Last week, we delved into Game of Thrones' heavy-handed foreshadowing of those darn dragon's eggs. This week, we discuss some of the standout characters (Daenerys! Arya!) from Episode 3 who've kept us intrigued with their decidedly non-medieval ways.
TVGuide.com's Hanh Nguyen is an avid scripted-TV watcher, a horror-avoider and someone who's read George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire book series, on which HBO's Game of Thrones is based. Her co-worker, Rich Juzwiak, rarely watches scripted TV, is a gorehound and became alerted to Martin's existence just recently, as he started researching this new swords-and-sandals (well, boots) series. He knows nothing of these sorcerers (if that is indeed what they are), while Hanh is something of an expert (read: fantasy/sci fi nerd). Each week, he'll try to make sense of this crazy new show by enlisting Hanh's expertise. It may turn out to be a test of tolerance: in this case, the Games begin after the TV is off.
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