In 2015, viewers can continue to tune in to the series during its longstanding Sunday at 9pm time slot, and also enjoy at least 20 additional hours of new programming — with some shows at 8pm, others at 10pm — throughout the year.
The enlarged Masterpiece footprint starts with Grantchester, a six-part mystery premiering Sunday, January 18at 10pm, following new episodes of Downton Abbey.
Already a hit in the UK, Grantchester stars James Norton as a charismatic young clergyman and Robson Green (Wire in the Blood) as a down-to-earth cop who team up to fight crime in the beautiful hamlet of Grantchester in 1953. Based on the acclaimed mystery novels by James Runcie, the young vicar is styled after Runcie’s late father, who was Archbishop of Canterbury in the 1980s.
On April 5, three-time Tony Award-winning actor Mark Rylance (Twelfth Night) and Emmy Award-winner Damian Lewis (Homeland) star as Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII in Wolf Hall, a highly anticipated adaptation of Hilary Mantel's Booker Prize-winning novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. The six-part series charts the shrewd and brilliant rise of Cromwell in the Tudor court — from a blacksmith's son to Henry VIII's closest advisor.
Other Masterpiece programming scheduled for 2015 includes a third series of the popular Mr. Selfridge starring Jeremy Piven; a stunning new adaptation of the 1970s blockbuster Poldark, starring Aidan Turner (The Hobbit, Being Human); and the sumptuous drama Indian Summers, set in the waning years of British colonial rule in 1930s India, starring the marvelous actress Julie Walters.
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