'Downton Abbey' PBS Season 5 Release Date 2015, Watch Interview With New Cast Member Richard E. Grant Here (VIDEO)

11:30 PM EST 1/2/2015 by Tam Woods, Celebeat Reporter

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The premiere of "Downton Abbey" Season 5 on PBS is just a few days away and fans are excited that Richard E. Grant (Withnail & I, Girls) has joined the cast. You can check out a new interview with Grant above. 

Grant will play an art expert who visits the estate to assess a Piero della Francesca painting owned by the Granthams. Grant has already co-starred with Maggie Smith (Countess Violet) in 2001's Gosford Park, also written by Fellowes. 

Grant also strikes up a relationship with Cora (Elizabeth McGovern), which isn't likely to please Robert (Hugh Bonneville). He is scheduled to appear in four episodes. 

The U.S. premiere of "Downton Abbey" Season 5 will air on Sunday night, January 4th, on Masterpiece on PBS. So all fans of the show can mark their calendars for it. The ironic thing is that the U.K. premiere will happen several months before the U.S. premiere, yet they do not a premiere date set yet. 

"Downton Abbey" is a British drama television series created by Julian Fellowes and co-produced by Carnival Films and Masterpiece. It first aired in the United Kingdom and Ireland in September 2010 and was picked up on PBS in the United States in January 2011 as part of the Masterpiece Classic anthology. The series won a Golden Globe Award for Best Miniseries or Television Film and a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Miniseries or Movie. 

The series, set in the fictional Yorkshire country estate of Downton Abbey, depicts the lives of the aristocratic Crawley family and their servants in the post-Edwardian era-with the great events in history having an effect on their lives and on the British social hierarchy. Such events depicted throughout the series include news of the sinking of the RMS Titanic in the first series; the outbreak of the First World War, the Spanish influenza pandemic, and the Marconi scandal in the second series; the interwar period and the formation of the Irish Free State in the third series; and the Teapot Dome scandal in the fourth series.

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