About Downton Abbey

"The sun is rising behind Downton Abbey, a great and splendid house in a great and splendid park. So secure does it appear, that it seems as if the way of life it represents will last for another thousand years. It won't."

From the pen of award-winning writer Julian Fellowes comes the third series of ITV1's costume drama, Downton Abbey, starring Maggie Smith, Hugh Bonneville and Elizabeth McGovern.

As they face new challenges, the Crawley family and the servants who work for them remain inseparably interlinked. Throughout the great house new arrivals rattle the established hierarchies, and the lives of the inhabitants are as shaped by romance, ambition, desire, shocks and heartbreak as ever.

The secure, serene and ordered world of Downton is rocked by passions below the surface and there are changes above and below stairs.

The third series, set in 1920, sees the return of all the much-loved characters in the sumptuous setting of Downton Abbey.