The story takes place in the fictional Downton Abbey, the ancestral home of The Rt Hon The Earl of Grantham, a hereditary aristocrat surnamed Crawley, and revolves around the various forms of their family life. The entire series also describes a number of historical events in reality. For example, the story time of the first episode of the first season is set in April 1912, with the sinking of the Titanic as an introduction, and the story of the second season opens for the first time. The Battle of the Somme in 1916 after the outbreak of the World Wars, which included the 1918 influenza pandemic.
The crew used Highclere Castle in Berkshire to shoot the exterior and some of the interior of the mansion. The servant's living scene was built and filmed at Ealing Studios, a film and television production company. The crew also shot exteriors in the village of Bampton, Oxfordshire, in particular St Mary's Church and the village library, which were used to arrange the entrance to the Manor Hospital in the play. The characters also frequently mention the North Yorkshire towns of Malton, Easingwold, Kirkby, Ripon and Thirsk. However, Downton's properties are centred around the fictional village of Downton, which is called by some in rural areas in England, but not in Yorkshire.
The filming cost of each episode is estimated to be £1 million on average, and it is considered by public opinion to be the most successful British period drama since "After the Storm" in the 1980s, with more than 10 million viewers in the UK alone. The show was also well received in the United States, with an average of 6 million viewers per episode.
