Downton Abbey

Downton Abbey began with Gareth Neame of Carnival Films, who wanted an Edwardian country-house drama and took the idea to Julian Fellowes, fresh from his Academy Award for the screenplay of Gosford Park. First imagined as a spin-off from that film, it became a standalone series set decades earlier, created and largely written by Fellowes. It premiered on ITV in September 2010, with America's PBS backing production through its Masterpiece strand, and ran to fifty-two episodes across six series before ending on Christmas Day 2015.

The story opens in April 1912, days after the sinking of the Titanic, on a fictional Yorkshire estate. Hugh Bonneville plays Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham, with Elizabeth McGovern as his American wife Cora, Michelle Dockery as their eldest daughter Mary and Maggie Smith as his mother Violet, the Dowager Countess, whose every line lands with perfect timing. Downstairs, Jim Carter's butler Carson and Phyllis Logan's housekeeper Mrs Hughes run a staff with loyalties and ambitions of its own. The family rooms were filmed at Highclere Castle, the servants' quarters recreated at Ealing Studios, and a historical adviser, Alastair Bruce, policed etiquette on set.

The first series scored 91 on Metacritic, a Guinness World Records high for 2011, and won the Emmy for Outstanding Miniseries or Movie and a Golden Globe. Smith alone took three Emmys. Critics divided over its warm view of the aristocracy; The Guardian called it television drama as comfort blanket. The story continued in three feature films, released in 2019, 2022 and 2025.