Downton Abbey: Three Reasons We Can’t Wait for Next Season

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Carnival for Masterpiece

Downton Abbey has a British following, that much we know. Season three premiered in England on Sunday, drawing in more than a whopping third of the entire British television audience. But in the U.S. we have to wait until January 2013 to get in on all the fun on PBS. Here are three reasons we’re chomping at the bit for the third season to show up on our side of the Atlantic:

1. Keeping us happy while the British have all the fun will get old really fast.

We’ve been getting little snippets of Downton Abbey trailers—sometimes only at 20 seconds a spot. And now that the season is underway in Britain, we can expect a new smattering of trailers, some with increased volume. The latest trailers have ratcheted up the footage to more a minute. An entire minute! But all these piecemealed trailers won’t hold us over forever.

(VIDEO: Take a Tour Through the Real Downton Abbey)

For fans who don’t want to ruin the entire season by jumping on UK blogs and reading all about the show, the constant updating of trailers, whether a snippet of a new character or some out-of-context dialogue, we’re going to get lost trying to patch it all together. But, since we can’t really help ourselves that much, here’s one of the latest:

[youtube=http://youtu.be/Kvw7J26V68U]

2. How will the new American play out through the season?

Lady Cora’s mother, Martha Levinson (played by Shirley MacLaine) has arrived to Downton Abbey from the U.S. and we will get to watch how she’s both written into the show and received on it. Along with the American, we’ve also got a new footman in the house.

Let’s review another clip:

[youtube=http://youtu.be/WkVDHZKahE4]

3. We love weddings and money trouble as much as the next continent.

Really, we want to know who is broke and who is—or isn’t—getting married. That’s all we care about, right? Love and money! The newest trailers give teases to both, although there’s no way to know what really happens.

Lord Grantham, aghast with shock, asks in a trailer, “Are you really telling me all the money is gone?” and receives an answer to the affirmative. Of course, we don’t know if he’s discussing the entire family fortune or a child’s piggybank. But we want to know. Another fleeting clip shows a veil fluttering in the wind, giving the feeling that a wedding has run amok. Does this spell trouble for Edith or Mary?

Now we really can’t wait until January. But in the meantime, at the risk of this trailer-watching thing getting old, here’s one more to whet the appetite:

[youtube=http://youtu.be/ZevgdSyxlZo]

MORE: What It Is Like To Live at the Real Downton Abbey