Michelle Dockery
Downton Abbey will return to PBS on ...
read more
Siobhan Finneran
After Sybil's and Matthew's untimely exits, we don't know if our hearts can take any more goodbyes. Unfortunately, it's not up to us. In a recent interview with the U.K.'s The Mirror, Downton Abbey star Siobhan Finneran revealed that she will not return for Season 4.
read more
Rob James-Collier
[Spoiler alert! The following contains details from Sunday's episode of Downton Abbey. Read if you dare risk the wrath of the Dowager Countess.]
Downton Abbey's Thomas finally got his comeuppance, but was it enough? Or was it unfair treatment?
On Sunday's episode, the sneering servant was finally outmaneuvered by his fellow downstairs nemesis O'Brien (Siobhan Finneran) who convinced him that footman Jimmy (Ed Speleers) reciprocated his romantic feelings. Thomas (Rob James-Collier) made his move by kissing the unsuspecting sleeping Jimmy, who was shocked and disgusted by the unwanted advances.
read more
Sophie McShera
"You know the trouble with you lot? You're all in love with the wrong people." -- the wisdom of Mrs. Patmore
Not every servant on Downton Abbey can have the fairy tale romance of Bates and Anna (false murder rap and imprisonment aside), and a servant in the 1920s is further constrained by his/her status. For every Gwen (Rose Leslie) who opened up her romantic prospects by becoming a secretary, sadly there's a fallen Ethel (Amy Nuttall) who's forced into prostitution after having an affair with a military man. What's one of the serving class to do but flirt awkwardly with one of their own in hopes of safely pairing off?
read more
Shirley Maclaine, Maggie Smith
Downton Abbey survived World War I. But can the country manor weather the latest skirmish, a below-stairs battle between those scheming servants O'Brien and Thomas?
That's just one of the many entertaining questions and diverting dilemmas presented by the long-awaited — and well worth the wait — third season of this Masterpiece Classic addiction, which returns like a delicious if bittersweet bonbon. (And how I hope you've kept the blinders on regarding the many spoilers issuing from across the pond during the recent U.K. telecast.)
"No family is ever what it seems from the outside," muses the formidable Dowager Countess (the peerless Maggie Smith) during one of the many crises that beset the Crawleys and their loyal servants over the next seven Sundays (PBS, check tvguide.com listings).
read more
Downton Abbey
On the West London set of Downton Abbey, where all of the "downstairs" scenes are shot, two footmen in formal attire are about to bring another lavish meal upstairs to the waiting lords and ladies. It's a familiar sight, but don't let it fool you: As Season 3 of the Emmy-winning drama begins, the Grantham family and their servants are entering a different world altogether — and it may be a difficult one for...
read more
Lindsay Lohan
What unbecomes a legend most? Look no further than this long weekend's well-timed candidate for the TV Turkey Hall of Fame: Liz & Dick (Lifetime, Sunday at 9/8c), an epic of stunningly cynical and pathetic miscasting, a TV-movie so laughably inept it doesn't deserve to be on a first-name basis with anything resembling humanity.
read more
Siobhan Finneran and Rob James-Collier
Send questions and comments to askmatt@tvguidemagazine.com and follow me on Twitter!
Question: I'm one of the last people one would expect to watch Downton Abbey, but after hearing the endless raves about it, I made it through the first season on DVD during a weekend, and a new episode is now one of the highlights of my TV-watching week. However, my question is about the "mean girls" (i.e. Thomas and Miss O'Brien). Sure, it's always fun to have a couple of mustache-twirling villains to root against, but unless I missed something, I guess they're supposed to be bad just for the sake of being bad.
read more
Dan Stevens and Michelle Dockery
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."
read more