Downton Abbey to return to the UK on January 5 on PBS (SPOILER ALERT: don’t read on if you are not up to date.)
The series left with your jaws open and with a huge suspense as it killed of three of its main characters. Matthew Crawley was ditched by Dan Stevens shortly after he was was finally blessed with a newborn; Stevens wanted to move on with his career. This left show creator Julian Fellowes to pick up the pieces.
Here’s the preview:
EW stated: “The series will begin season 4 six months after Matthew’s death as Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) remains in a slough of despond, Violet, the Dowager Countess (Maggie Smith), and Branson (Allen Leech) both encourage her to forget things and move on, while her father indulges her reticence to rejoin the world.”
Julian Fellowes when interviewed stated: “The moment I realized we could have a six-month gap,I realized we could also have a disagreement about how Mary is doing and how we should be looking after her…Mary herself is entirely torn. In one way she likes the fact that her father doesn’t want to put her under any pressure. But in another way she gradually becomes aware that people are telling her that she has got to get a move on. You could say the rebuilding of Mary is the subtitle of the fourth series.”
Some of the other story lines that were revealed include a romance between Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael)and her newspaper editor Michael Gregson (Charles Edwards), It also includes a look at the younger set in the form of misbehaving Lady Rose MacClare (Lily James).
Fellowes added: “I just wanted to have some story lines that would be inappropriate with older characters,If you suddenly had Edith running around dancing like a flapper and getting pissed, you would just think, ‘Oh for Christ’s sake, pull yourself together.’ Whereas because Rose is 18 or 19, you forgive it.”