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Writer-producer Julian Fellowes attends the premiere of 'Downton Abbey,' at Alice Tully Hall in New York.
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Julian Fellowes moves from 'Downton Abbey' to 'Belgravia'

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Julian Fellowes moves from 'Downton Abbey' to 'Belgravia'

PASADENA, Calif. – In Belgravia, Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes adapts his own best-selling novel about secrets among members of London high society in the 19th century, beginning at a lavish party on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo.

The six-episode limited series, premiering April 12 on the Epix premium cable channel, certainly gives off a Downton vibe in its trailer, from the costumes to the music. But Downton executive producer Gareth Neame said Belgravia is nothing like the PBS series, in part because it has a beginning and an end.

“People who love Downton, I think there’s a lot of the same comedy of manners and social observation,” he said at an Epix press conference during the Television Critics Association winter 2020 press tour. “[But there’s also] a mystery at the heart of it. It’s a story about this couple and how they deal with the big tragedy in their lives and the repercussions of all of that.”

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Fellowes said the time period of Belgravia also differs from Downton.

“It’s really in a sense the rise of the great Victorian era of manufactur[ing] and money-making and empire and … the expansion of London and so on, whereas you could say that Downton was on the other side of the hill and was part of the decline, particularly as we follow it through into the 1920s.”

After working on a Downton feature film last year, Fellowes said he is finishing scripts for the long-gestating The Gilded Age, which last year shifted from NBC to HBO. Set in 1885 New York and chronicling the disparity between old money and new money, The Gilded Age will star Christine Baranski, Cynthia Nixon, Amanda Peet and Morgan Spector.

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“We're in pre-production. We shoot this year sometime, and it's in reasonably good shape,” Fellowes said, noting that being on HBO allows for more time per episode. He’s still working with Bob Greenblatt, an executive who moved from NBC to HBO about nine months before Gilded Age followed him there.

Is there any difference between making a series for an American media company than a British one?

“You do get more notes,” Fellowes said, smiling and with a twinkle in his eye.

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‘Little America’

Apple TV+recently debuted Little America, an eight-episode anthology series inspired by true stories from Epic Magazine. The stories are personal, not political, but producers from the subscription streaming service acknowledge that just telling immigrants’ stories may be viewed as a political statement.

“We're not presenting an agenda. [But] just by saying that immigrants are human beings with hopes, desires, likes and dislikes, in this climate, is a radical statement,” said executive producer Kumail Nanjiani (Silicon Valley, The Big Sick).

“We decided that if we're telling a story about immigrants and we make it overtly political, you're taking the focus away from the person whose story you're telling and you're putting the focus on the political system or the immigration system, and we didn’t want that. We wanted the focus to be on these people, on these stories.”

Episodes include the story of a Nigerian student who moves to Oklahoma and embraces cowboy fashion and a 12-year-old tasked with running his family’s Utah hotel after his parents are deported back to India. In one episode, Zachary Quinto plays a guru at a silent retreat who meets a French immigrant.

Nanjiani said Little America, already renewed for a second season, tries to avoid making its characters too perfect.

“These are people with flaws,” he said. “Sometimes I’ve noticed – I'm sensitive to it – this sense that sometimes you portray the minority as being noble or having some kind of wisdom that the rest of us don't have and I find that to be, in some ways, just as reductive as portraying negative stereotypes.”

‘Morning Show’ season two

Producers of the Apple TV+ drama The Morning Show said they have no deal yet for Steve Carell to return as disgraced news anchor Mitch. Executive producer Michael Ellenberg said the first two scripts of season two have been written so presumably Mitch isn’t back in those unless there are contingencies for a rewrite

Star Jennifer Aniston said the show’s first season explored the #MeToo movement but also gender dynamics, power dynamics, abuse of power and not just abuse of sexual power.

“What we were trying to do is take a very realistic and humanistic look at this situation that we have all as a society have allowed to happen unconsciously actually,” Aniston said, noting the response to the series from broadcast journalists has been especially rewarding.

“The journalists who have said it’s staggering how spot-on it is, which is all we could hope to do, replicate the world in as true a fashion as we possibly can.”

Rob Owen is the television writer for the Block News Alliance, which consists of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and The Blade. Contact him at rowen@post-gazette.com or 412-263-2582.

First Published February 4, 2020, 11:00 a.m.

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Writer-producer Julian Fellowes attends the premiere of 'Downton Abbey,' at Alice Tully Hall in New York.  (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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