Downton Abbey Christmas Special 2012

The good old Radion Times has spilled the beans on the eagerly awaited Christmas Special. We loved the 2011 one and are holding our breath.
The RT writes "The Crawleys go off on their holidays! The servants are left to fend for themselves! And there's scandal, intrigue and romance in store!
Forget the upstairs/downstairs divide, this year’s Downton Abbey Christmas special will see the Crawleys and their servants living in different countries.
Lord Grantham and his family are heading north to the Scottish Highlands to join the Dowager Countess’s great niece Lady Rose and her parents at Duneagle Castle.
Initally, a warm welcome awaits, but the tensions between the family and their hosts soon become clear.
We’re promised “salacious scandals, clandestine courtships and heartbreaks of seasons past” will all come to a head during the feature-length episode.
And while it may well snow (it is Scotland, after all) don’t expect Christmas decorations or another stilted present-giving as the seasonal special is, in fact, set in September.
But what of those left back at Downton? What do servants do when there's no-one to serve? Will Lord Grantham return to find they’ve had a massive party and smashed up the Abbey? Carson is of course determined to prevent this, but with the excitement of the approaching country fair, it's possible some of the staff could be tempted to push their luck.
Speaking of luck, we hear a rumour that romance could be in the air for chirpy cook Mrs Patmore. And as far as we're concerned, that's better than any Christmas present."

DOWNTON ABBEY Christmas Special

At P AND P TOURS we're all on tenterhooks waiting for the Xmas special... will Lady Mary find herself pregnant... will Lady Edith be successful in love... will Branson stay on?
Here's a snippet from cartermatt.com who writes
"You have to give some serious credit to the producers of “Downton Abbey” season 3 at this very moment. Their Christmas special is now only a month and a half away from airing, but we still know so little about it that almost the entire ordeal is shrouded in mystery. This will likely stay that way until we get a week or two away from the show finally airing, and at that point producers may finally submit to giving us some more information just about what is happening via a promo or a press release.For now, what we can tell you is this: the special was taping in August using some of the same sort of locations that you would expect to see on the show, and that it will be a two-hour episode just as it was this past year. When you think about it, this more or less extends the past two years of “Downton Abbey” to ten episodes, which puts it at the same length as some HBO series such as “Game of Thrones” or “The Newsroom.” (That bit of trivia is for those of you constantly complaining that the show is too short.)

There are rumors floating around that suggest this special may not be set during the holidays, but these for the time being are not confirmed. Even if this is the case, the special is still expected to celebrate the spirit of the holiday; given that this special actually airs on Christmas Day, it’s hard to see it being overly depressing on the same level as Sybil dying during childbirth.
What we are a bit more curious about is whether or not we will be handed any answers pertaining to the show’s greatest mysteries in this special, including whether or not Dan Stevens and Maggie Smith are going to return to the show. If Julian Fellowes knew in advance that they were each not going to be back (though this is unlikely), he may have created something in the script to send Matthew or Violet away from the Abbey."

Firth and Fassbender double bill thrill

 
  According to www.examiner.com a new film is send our hearts into double-flutter when it hits our screens in 2014.
examiner writes; "Two phenomenal actors are set to star in what is likely to be an Oscar contender.
According to a press release today (via Collider), Academy Award winner Colin Firth (“The King’s Speech”) and Michael Fassbender (“X-Men: First Class”) have joined director Michael Grandage’s “Genius.”
Based on A. Scott Berg’s biography “Max Perkins: Editor of Genius,” and it tells the story of the relationship between Thomas Wolfe (Fassbender) and editor Max Perkins (Firth).
Perkins served as an editor for a number of literary greats, including Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and his role as a devoted friend and surrogate psychoanalyst made him privy to the intricate details of these men’s lives.
The script was written by John Logan (“Hugo”) so you know it will have some excellent character development, but unfortunately we will not be able to see this epic team-up for more than 2 years as it doesn’t begin production until early 2014."