The third season of "Downton Abbey" is premiering on PBS next month, and the network's executives are already looking ahead to the series' fourth season will hit the airwaves stateside.
“The audiences for 'Downton' have been terrific,” senior VP and PBS’ chief programming executive John Wilson noted in an interview with THR. “So you can’t say that [airing months earlier in the UK] has knocked the legs out from underneath 'Downton Abbey.' On the other hand, we can’t know how much more terrific it might have been had it aired closer to the UK premiere.”
Wilson added that the network is assessing the possibility of airing Season 4 of "Downton Abbey" closer to the UK premiere date. Though that would make US fans happy, one thing about Season 4 is still upsetting: Dan Stevens' decision to duck out of the series.
As avid U.S. viewers of Downton Abbey are acutely aware, lucky UK telly watchers have already been treated to an early Christmas with the recent completion of the second series of the hit ITV series. But wait. There’s one more present to unwrap. Even though the Downton Abbey Christmas Special broadcast schedule has not yet been set, early pictures are starting to surface. Thanks to Ian Wylie (@ianwylie), a stellar UK journalist who has spent many an evening at Highclere Castle the past couple of years, for sharing the photo depicting residents of Downton Abbey in a really cool looking sepia-tone photo. The new special will take viewers into the new year of 1920.
While UK viewers will be able to open the gift the world is waiting for either on Christmas Day or Boxing Day, U.S. viewers will have to wait until early March 2012 which will be the end of the PBS Masterpiece broadcast of season two which premieres Sunday, January 8, 2012. While Christmas can’t come soon enough for telly watchers in the UK, fear not, U.S. fans of Downton Abbey, January 8 is just around the corner.
A few weeks ago, Sophia Grace Brownlee and her hype girl, Rosie McClelland went on Ellento perform “Super Bass” in honor of their favorite singer, Nicki Minaj. Things went so swimmingly, that DeGeneres invited them back yesterday to catch up. Dressed in new digs (but still sticking to the pink tutu style they know and love), Sophia Grace, 8, and Rosie, 5, sat down with Ellen to talk about how famous they are post-You Tube fame (23 million people, to date).
Sophia Grace has since lost a tooth and scored two pounds, and she simply couldn’t save her reward. “I bought two little pony toys,” SG told DeGeneres. And what did SG think of meeting Minaj? “Oh, that was just so good. I couldn’t get to sleep that night.”
And what did the girls think of Ellen’s Halloween costume? “That’s Ellen and she was dressed up as me,” Sophia Grace shouted jovially. “And she even had her own hype girl! And Tony dressed up as Nicki Minaj!”
I’d like to get me one of those tutu dresses. Catch the interview PLUS a special performance by the girls after the jump.
Henry Cavill was spotted yesterday (November 9) in Vancouver, Canada after doing a weekend of promotions in Los Angeles for his latest film, Immortals. Henry is returning to Vancouver continue shooting his film Man of Steel.
Now Crowe is playing his father in Man of Steel and he did remember Cavill from that introduction eleven years ago. “After the end of that journey of a thousand miles, that first journey, he’s there at the end as well,” Cavill said.
PHOTOS: A Shirtless Henry Cavill Fights The Bad Guys For ‘Man Of Steel
Superman’s red underpants (or lack thereof) was brought up, leading Cavill to crack, “Why wear underpants when you can be far more revealing?” To get ready for the role, he said he worked out two hours a day for eight months.
Watch Henry’s appearance on The Tonight Show…
(I so understand this woman, Suzanne Morrison, author of Yoga Bitch - a new author, flapping around, trying to promote her book. Her only relaxation is good friends and Downton Abbey! So true. - Karen)
For the Exhausted Author, Wellness Is on the T.V.
Posted: 10/13/11 10:35 AM ET
But let me tell you: it's pretty freaking hard to relax when twitter, facebook, goodreads, and google beckon the new author to obsess over her sales, her status, her rank and reviews. I felt like I needed to remove my head and put it in cold storage for a day or two. But I was at my dear friend Kate's apartment in Williamsburg, and her refrigerator really wasn't big enough for my head. So we debated how best to structure a day of recovery from the travel, the endless self-promotion, the micromania of having a book out. Here's what I would normally do:
Yoga. Let me just say that the very last thing I wanted to do after spending weeks promoting a book called Yoga Bitch was yoga. I needed a prescription for Xanax just to think of the word yoga.
Read. The second-to-last thing I wanted to do after spending weeks promoting a book of any kind was read. I had tried, and the book I was reading, Patti Smith's Just Kids, prompted such a powerful spasm of self-loathing I had to either put the book down or jump out of the airplane I was traveling in at the time. I hadn't dared touch a book since.
Kate suggested we take a walk. I figured that was probably a good start. Sounded healthy. But she had something in mind for me, something that would truly help me get well. She took me to one of those artisanal-everything shops in Williamsburg and ordered two organic pepperoni sticks. She bought popcorn coated in caramel and sprinkled with bacon bits. "We're going to watch TV," she said, adding an enormous bag of fancy beef jerky to her basket. At the thought of eating beef jerky, I cried a little, because when I'm this tired, happiness feels a little like sadness. I hid for a moment behind a wall of fleur de sel, and wept.
Within half an hour we were each settled on our own couch, and Kate had put the first of seven episodes of Downton Abbey on the television. During the opening Masterpiece Theatre promo, Colin Firth's face flashed across the screen. Colin Firth isn't actually in Downton Abbey, but I knew, at once, that I was going to love it.
I more than loved it. Downton Abbey is the greatest thing to happen to me since the BBC's 6-hour Pride & Prejudice, which I also watched with Kate back when I lived in New York and still knew how to watch television all day. It's an upstairs-downstairs British saga that starts the day after the sinking of the Titanic and ends at the onset of World War I.
Whenever I'm full of worry and prone to complain, my mother admonishes me to think about others for a change, that there will be relief from my own problems if I dwell, instead, on the problems of others. My mother is a very good person, and I'm pretty sure she means that I should go volunteer somewhere, or maybe pray for those who have less than I.
Well. Spending an entire day thinking about the inhabitants of Downton Abbey, both the aristos upstairs and the servants down below, may not qualify as charity, but holy God, did it relieve me of myself. The troubling vicissitudes of my own frail and trembling ego, the endless worry and strategizing that had deprived me of sleep and rest for months, were assuaged as I worried, wholeheartedly, for the Crawley girls, whose estate had been entailed away.
***
"But it's the twentieth century!" I cried. (Literally. I was crying.)
***
"I KNOW," Kate replied from her couch. "It's SHOCKING."
***
"It's so Jane Austen."***"SO Jane Austen."
***
I worried, fiercely, for the crippled-yet-proud Mr. Bates, that the pernicious a-holes O'Brien & Thomas would have their way and see him fired. What would he do then? He was a cripple, for god's sake, and the world is cold and cruel! And the eldest sister, Lady Mary? Would she succumb to her grandmother Violet's wishes and marry the lower-class cousin on whom the estate had been entailed? Would she whore herself out for the sake of her family fortune? And what about the hot Turk she KILLS with SEX?
Television. It's the greatest invention ever. By episode three I was a new person, wholly energized and as well as a yogini after her 108th sun salutation. Who needs Omega fats and deep breathing and flowing linen when you can wear the leggings & ripped t-shirt you slept in while gnawing on fancy beef jerky like a starlet's puggle?
"This is the happiest day of my life," I said to Kate. We were on episode 7. Night was falling. I could actually feel my entire backside growing into the couch.
"Seriously," Kate said. "The greatest." She caught a bit of drool with the back of her hand. "My wedding was nice, though."
"Mine, too," I said. "It's a tie."
"Yeah," she said. "Let's watch Harry Potter after this." And she passed me another slice of jerky.
Colin Firth will star in The Railway Man, an adaptation of British officer Eric Lomax’s book of the same name, which recounts his torture by the Japanese during the construction of the "death railway" during World War II. Usually we'd make an attempt at some lighthearted commentary here, but, you know, "death railway." Grade: A-
The Carrie Diaries — Candace Bushnell’s young-adult Sex and the City prequel revolving around Carrie Bradshaw’s senior year of high school — has officially been picked up for the CW, with Gossip Girl’s Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage producing. Great news for people who love sexy puns about the rigors of the college application process. Grade: B+ Ellen DeGeneres has sold a pitch to NBC for a multicamera comedy about dueling sisters, with her wife Portia de Rossi slated to play one of the sisters. Just to make things awkward for everyone, Anne Heche will play the other sister (not really). Grade: B
Ryan Seacrest is in talks to take over MTV Network’s VH1 Soul, a little-loved cable channel broadcasting soul and R&B music videos, along with AEG and CAA. It’s not yet clear what the plans for the network are, but Seacrest would possibly do production and on-air work, as well as provide connections to talent. VH1 Soul seems like a strange fit for the omnipresent American Idol host, until you consider the little known fact that Martha and the Vandellas were originally known as Martha and the Ryan Seacrests. Grade: C-
Beauty and the Beast will be remade once again, this time as a one-hour fantasy drama for ABC, with Human Target’s Jonathan E. Steinberg attached to executive produce and write the screenplay. Anthropomorphic candles, call your agents! Grade: D
Nick Stoller, the writer/director (and friend of Jason Segel) behind Forgetting Sarah Marshall and The Muppets, has landed a single-camera comedy at CBS called Hot Mess. A loosely autobiographical ensemble sitcom about a guy who works a cubicle away from the girl who broke his heart, it’s Stoller’s first television work since his early days on Judd Apatow’s Undeclared. When asked why he decided to work with CBS, Stoller blushingly confessed his lifelong admiration of the work of Angus T. Jones. Grade: A
Jay Baruchel, who just so happens to be another Undeclared alum, is keeping his writing side gig flourishing. Along with his partner Jesse Chabot, he’s landed the job of adapting Canadian author Dave Bidini’s 2005 memoir Baseballissimo, about life in Nettuno, Italy, where American soldiers introduced baseball in 1944. The best part of this: The book was optioned by none other than Rush frontman Geddy Lee. Seeing as Baruchel’s from Montreal, the only way this thing could get more Canadian is if the movie's audiences get drenched, Double Dare-style, in maple syrup while sitting in the theater. Grade: B
