And now for that difficult second album. Downton Abbey’s stately progress last autumn revived in television audiences a taste thought long dead: for populist drama offering a sepia-tinted vision of the English class system in which the well-to-do are dressed for dinner by bowing/curtsying feudal underlings. With social mobility back roughly where it was a century ago. it could almost have been a snapshot of modern UK plc. That did not stop it from being hungrily consumed as pure escapism, both here and in America where overnight it won four Emmys.

Defying predictions that there would be no audience for a period costume drama set in an Edwardian country house, Downton Abbey has become the TV event of 2010. Episode one notched 11.6 million viewers (including repeats and ITV Player viewings), while episode two edged up to 11.8 million.

Downton Abbey was judged a risk when ITV cleared Sunday nights to accommodate it. It cost a good deal, and harked back to a world and an era which, it might be supposed, a modern television audience would no longer wish to visit. But aside from the pedigree supplied by Julian Fellowes, who had already helped to create one country house in Gosford Park, it had two things going for it: the quality of the cast and the quality of the costumes. On the assumption that its devotees will now be entering a period of mourning, theartsdesk celebrates both in a gallery of images from the set of Downton Abbey.

Downton Abbey was judged a risk when ITV cleared Sunday nights to accommodate it. It cost a good deal, and harked back to a world and an era which, it might be supposed, a modern television audience would no longer wish to visit. But aside from the pedigree supplied by Julian Fellowes, who had already helped to create one country house in Gosford Park, it had two things going for it: the quality of the cast and the quality of the costumes. On the assumption that its devotees will now be entering a period of mourning, theartsdesk celebrates both in a gallery of images from the set of Downton Abbey.

With the BBC still in the middle of shooting their revival of Upstairs, Downstairs, ITV1 have nipped in ahead of them with Julian Fellowes's spiffing new sundown-on-the-aristocracy drama. In a battle of the stage dames, the Beeb has bagged Eileen Atkins, whereas ITV has signed up Maggie Smith as Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham. So far she has not been called upon to say, "A handbag?"