As Masterpiece executive producer Rebecca Eaton relates in her new memoir Making Masterpiece (out today), she initially passed on Downton. When ITV, Downton‘s U.K. network, called with a pitch in 2009, it sounded too similar to past projects like Upstairs, Downstairs, which was due for a remake at the time. Eaton initially said ‘no thanks.’ The British network got the same response from HBO and all the American networks (even though NBC had business ties to the production company that made the show). Nobody wanted to air Downton…which meant that, in 2010, when Eaton changed her mind, it was still available for PBS to broadcast. The rest was Crawley-family history.We now live in a world where the long-running PBS series Masterpiece is rarely mentioned without the hit British import Downton Abbey in the same sentence — but what now seems like an obvious pairing almost didn’t happen. In fact, Downton almost didn’t make it across the pond at all.
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