ITV has committed to a third season of the upstairs/downstairs drama Downton Abbey, the BBC reports, proving that sometimes success on television is as simple as telling a compelling story full of rich characters, and then setting a Guinness World Record for critical praise. The show is currently wrapping its second season in the U.K., soon to be followed by the obligatory Christmas special that is required by every British television show, as promised by Prime Minister Anthony Eden as a way of making up for his handling of the Suez Crisis. The third season—due to air overseas next year, then slowly, torturously make its way to the U.S.—will be set in the early 1920s, presumably picking up with the rise of the “Bright Young People” and promising lots of Lost Generation bohemia and daringly short skirts, all of which will give Maggie Smith’s Dowager Countess plenty to glare at.
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