One of the most loved television series of all time is brought back to life with a stellar cast and a story full of scandal, romance and intrigue set against a sweeping historical backdrop.

1936. The house at 165 Eaton Place has stood empty since the Bellamy family sold it six years earlier. Now the doors are finally flung open by new owners, diplomat Sir Hallam, his wife Lady Agnes, and, back from the Raj, Maud, Lady Holland, his mother. With the arrival of Agnes’s debutante sister, Lady Persie, the sumptuous home is ready to come to life.

And who better than Rose, the house’s former parlourmaid, to recruit the new staff? The new 'downstairs' family is as full of characters as its previous incarnation with the highly strung butler Mr Pritchard, cook Mrs Thackeray, chauffeur Harry Spargo and a vivacious and spirited young team.

Soon both the elegant upstairs world and the downstairs staff have built their own labyrinth of secrets, lies and scandal, and as they feel the tremors of royal and political upheaval and the ominous threat of war, the house reverberates to the familiar sounds of rumour, excitement and dread…

Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West first met in 1922 when they were aged 40 and their correspondence continued for the next 20 years until Virginia's suicide in 1941. While Vita revered Virginia's genius, Virginia was at times dismisive of Vita's litterary skills. Eileen Atkins' dramatisation of their correspondence was originally presented at Chichester Theatre in 1992 and at London's Ambassadors Theatre in 1993 and provides a challenging two-hander for women.

Will She Do? is the story of a girl from a council estate in Tottenham, born in 1934 to an electric-meter reader and a seamstress, who was determined to be an actress.

Candid and witty, this memoir takes her from her awkward performances in working-men's clubs at six years of age as dancing 'Baby Eileen', through the war years in London, to her breakthrough at thirty-two on Broadway with The Killing of Sister George, for which she received the first of four Tony Award nominations. She co-created Upstairs, Downstairs and wrote the screenplay for Mrs Dalloway (for which she won an Evening Standard Award) and at aged eighty-six, this is her first autobiographical work.

Characterised by an eye for the absurd, a terrific knack for storytelling and an insistence on honesty, Will She Do? is a wonderful raconteur's tale about family, about class, about youthful ambition and big dreams and what really goes on behind the scenes.

Made a Dame in 1991, Eileen Atkins has been on American and British stage and screen since 1957 and has won an Emmy, a BAFTA and is a three-time Olivier Award winner; her theatre performances include The Height of the Storm, Ellen Terry, All that Fall and she has appeared in television and films ranging from Doc Martin to Cranford to The Crown.

British comedy starring Dakota Blue Richards, Christian McKay and Miles Jupp. When a group of men face the daunting prospect of finding a new local pub after theirs is threatened with closure, they pool together to figure out a way to raise enough cash to save the pub. When they decide to write a novel based on the popular 'mummy porn' genre, they contact a publisher (Eileen Atkins), pretending to be the author's agents, who agrees to publish the book on the condition that the author commit herself to a book tour. Desperate for the deal to go through, David (McKay) asks his sister-in-law Zoe (Richards) to pretend to be the author of their prospective best-seller for the sake of the press. All goes to plan until a studio buys the film rights and asks Zoe to play the lead...