Arts & Entertainment

Downton Abbey Returns Sunday Night

Popular PBS Masterpiece Classic series returns for its third season Sunday at 9 p.m.

Downton Abbey, the popular time-period series from PBS Masterpiece Classic, returns to PBS stations in the U.S. Sunday night at 9 p.m. with a two-hour episode.

The show transports viewers back to an English estate at the turn of the last century and explores life for both the aristocratic British family that lives in Downton Abbey and the many servants who both live and work there.

The last episode of Season 2 concluded with a much-anticipated (second) proposal between distant cousins Mathew Crawley and Lady Mary Crawley, the heiress to Downton Abbey.

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According to a synopsis on the PBS Masterpiece Classic website, "The third season of 'Downton Abbey' commences with the family and staff preparing for Mary and Matthew's wedding; and Cora's mother (Shirley MacLaine) arriving from the United States. Robert, meanwhile, receives bad news about an investment."

As has been foreshadowed in various previews [Spoiler Alert] the Earl of Grantham, Robert Crawley, learns that his family's fortune is all but gone.

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In an interview with NPR, Hugh Bonneville, who plays Grantham, explained the significance of such news for his character and the story.

"This was a world before financial advisers; if you had money, it made money — it was as simple as that, in that post-Industrial Revolution era. So this is the big crisis point for Robert and for the estate," Bonneville told NPR.

Listen to the full NPR interview here.

To watch Downtown Abbey locally, you can search for local listings here. Depending on your cable service provider, you should be able to find it on channels 22, 26 or 32 at 9 p.m. Sunday.


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