Countdown to Downton; Isobel vs. Violet and Mr. Carson + Mrs. Hughes

With the 5th season series premiere of Downton Abbey a mere week away, America is preparing to let all phone calls go to voicemail when PBS’ Masterpiece series returns to Downton beginning at 9:00p ET/8:00p CT on Sunday, January 4, 2015. Since it’s been almost a year since we last visited the Crawleys, it’s time for a bit of catch-up […]

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George Clooney arrives at Downton Abbey – Dowager Countess swoons!

OMG! It’s Christmas at Downton and Lord Robert Crawley (Hugh Bonneville) seems to be facing financial ruin once again. In true It’s A Wonderful Life fashion, he’s beginning to wonder if his family may be better off without him but divine intervention in the form of a very special heavenly body (in the form of […]

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Martha Stewart’s Gingerbread Abbey is just in time for the holidays!

Leave it to the creative brilliance of Martha Stewart to make a bit of holiday greatness out of the most highly-anticipated television series premiere of 2015. Thankfully, that premiere is only 4 days into the new year so there’s not long to wait! Martha Stewart and her team have created a “Gingerbread Abbey”—a stunning likeness […]

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‘Imitation Game’ star Benedict Cumberbatch talks Bletchley Park

Labeling it an ‘overwhelming experience’, Benedict Cumberbatch, star of The Imitation Game, talked recently about his filming the story of wartime code-breaker Alan Turing in the place where he actually lived and worked, Bletchley Park. It was Turing, the troubled genius mathematician, who spent the Second World War building an early computer that could crack encoded […]

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Fancy a night’s stay at Highclere…sort of?

If you are wondering what it would be like to be a part of the Crawley family and stay overnight at Highclere Castle, the setting for Downton Abbey, now is your chance…sort of. Beginning Valentine’s Day, the Highclere estate is offering guests the opportunity to access your inner-most Dowager Countess and stay the night in […]

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Start the New Year off right with Roald Dahl’s Esio Trot on BBC One

The UK Christmas Day to New Year’s Day tradition of great telly just gets better and better with every passing year. Besides the usual obligatory specials from Eastenders, Coronation Street and Doctor Who to look forward to, in recent years those lucky ones to receive the BBC and ITV signal have been treated to specials from Call the Midwife, […]

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Downton Abbey series 5 Q&A with cast in NYC

With the full acknowledgment and understanding of the growing annual frustration that American fans of Downton Abbey feel knowing that as each new series premieres in the UK almost 5 months prior to it’s U.S. premiere on PBS’ Masterpiece series (September v. January), the silver lining treat to this delay usually occurs in the month of […]

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The ‘Downton Abbey’ Holiday Gift Guide: post-electricity, of course!

The holidays must have been so easy in the early twenties. No Tickle-Me-Elmo’s, no Transformers, no impossible to find Cabbage Patch Kids, Beanie Babies or Furbies and no iPods, iPads, iWatch or iWhatever’s to endlessly have to stand in line for or get up before the crack of dawn for that ‘hurry, only one available’ Black […]

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UK’s ‘The Great British Bake Off’ headed to PBS!

Now that #DowntonDay2015 is knocking at our front door, what better way to begin your Sunday evening appointment television viewing this Winter than with a dose of the BAFTA award-winning British television baking competition, The Great British Bake Off, as your lead-in to the return of Downton Abbey. Officially to be re-titled The Great British […]

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