A Night at the Abbey

Celebrate the new season of our favorite British soap with tales of drawing room drama, scullery skullduggery and romance, and roaring twenties highjinks.

Actors including Broadway actress Jayne Houdyshell (Follies; Bye Bye Birdie), Jim Dale (Harry Potter audio books; Pushing Daisies), and Clea Alsip (Boardwalk Empire) read selections from books that parallel the lives of the Crawley family and their servants, including an excerpt from Edith Wharton's lush tale of a rich American dame who marries into English royalty, The Buccaneers; a kitchen maid's colorful memoir of life downstairs in an English country estate and her efforts to learn French cuisine; a wacky P.G. Wodehouse tale of Jeeves and Wooster's madcap antics as they attempt to assist a lovelorn friend; and more. With special guests A.D. Miles (head writer at Late Night with Jimmy Fallon), who will introduce two brand-new episodes of Downton Sixbey, starring Jimmy Fallon; and Knopf design guru and Downton fan Chip Kidd.