Downton Abbey: Season Two New York Screening & Panel

By Michelle Michalos
Wednesday, January 11th, 2012
  • comments (8)

On December 15, PBS and WNET hosted a Downton Abbey: Season Two screening and cast panel at the Times Center in New York City. Cast members Hugh Bonneville, Elizabeth McGovern, Michelle Dockery, Dan Stevens, and Joanne Froggatt were all in attendance, along with co-creator Gareth Neame and Masterpiece Executive Producer Rebecca Eaton, who moderated the discussion.

Check out photos from the event:

Season Two of Downton Abbey airs Sundays January 8 – February 19 at 9 p.m. on THIRTEEN. This season, get caught up with episode recaps on The Downton Dish, and learn more about the series with videos clips and extras.

Watch the full panel discussion here:


  • Sandra

    This was an excellent night and very well organized. However, there were a lot of us there, but the only photos and videos you have of fans meeting the cast are the same two women. I don’t think it’s fair when there were so many fans there. It makes it look bad. I understand not every picture and piece of footage can be used, but I’ve seen the same girls meeting Elizabeth McGovern and Michelle Dockery. as well as in the video. Honestly, I mean no rudeness, it’s just an observation. It was an excellent event and a lot of fun!

  • Marianne

    Thank you for the video! I am a huge fan and it’s really fun to see these great actors in “real life.” I personally would prefer that the moderator not give the audience any clues whatsoever about the plots of future episodes; part of the fun is not knowing what will happen or whether the romance between Mary and Matthew will resolve itself in this series, or ever!

  • No Name

    Great panel … however, is it me, or did Rebecca Eaton talk too much?! Just let the guests talk, woman! And why did she keep reaching down and smoothing her pants? :)

  • Professor Joan Ray

    Jane Austen readers know about entails! The “entail,” which is most famous in Austen’s PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, wherein the Bennet home is entailed on heirs male (in P&P on Mr. Collins, Mr. Bennet’s distant cousin), is a long-established legal tradition so that an estate remains in the paternal family. Thus, with Matthew Crawley as the heir of Downton Abbey, the Crawley name will remain as owner. Also, fyi, at the time of Austen’s novels and Downton Abbey, when a woman married, her money went to her husband upon marriage. Thus, the problems faced by the Downton ladies. (PS, I served as the “expert” for Masterpiece’s EMMA and SENSE and SENSIBILITY for the Barnes and Noble / Masterpiece Book club on line during those series’s runs. )

  • Professor Joan Ray

    Professor Joan Ray is now replying to herself because in today’s NY Times (1/19/12, p. 1 of Thursday Styles) in a piece by Aimee Lee Ball re “Downton Abbey” viewing parties, she quotes Julie Alter commenting on entails and quoting Lady Cora’s calling it a “legal theft.” We should note that entails were not required, but traditional, as I previously observed,to keep property under the family name. But as Jane Austen tells us through Lady Catherine in Pride and Prejudice, the de Bourgh family did not believe in entails, and so her daughter will succeed to Rosings. Of course, making the entail seem required gives a plot line to DA. Also, the entail can be broken (as in P&P the Bennets hope it will be via the birth of a son) by the incumbent’s agreeing with the current owner to “break the entail.”

  • Greyfort

    Consider yourselves lucky. Here in Boston (the home of Masterpiece blah blah blah) the only actor in our panel of three was Elizabeth McGovern (for whom I have great respect and was very pleased that she was there).

  • Renee De Bramaletta

    Please let me know when the next session 3 will start showing on PBS. Thank you very much

  • Reva

    I, also, would like to know when the next session 3 will start showing on PBS. Thank you


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