Harry Potter), Elizabeth McGovern (
A Room With a View), Dan Stevens (
Sense & Sensibility) and a country-house full of other great actors, the miniseries set audience records during its UK broadcast. Laura Linney hosts.
The plot of
Downton Abbey is straight out of Jane Austen, updated to the era that introduced electric lights and telephones. It is 1912. The
Titanic has just gone down in the north Atlantic, taking with it the two male heirs to Downton Abbey, whose current Lord Grantham has only daughters, albeit marriageable ones. His nearest male relative is a handsome lawyer a bachelor living in Manchester, who soon learns the ropes of managing a sprawling country estate with its army of devoted, sometimes bickering servants; its hunts; its garden parties and its sexual intrigues.