“You have a straightforward choice,” says Dame Maggie Smith’s Dowager Countess in the kindest and least characteristic tone she has ever used, “you must choose either death…” and there is a significant pause, “… or life.”

Lady Mary takes this in, looks back over the recent past, including a devastating and brutal loss, and asks, without mutiny, “and you think I should choose life?”

So begins the one minute montage trailer for the next season of Downton Abbey, which starts this month in Britain, and airs on PBS in January:

Roll on the new year!