Downton Abbey season 5 premiere
Downton Abbey season 5 premieres Sunday, 4 January, 9pm ET on PBS ITV

Downton Abbey season 5's US premiere is on Sunday, 9pm ET on PBS.

The episode synopsis suggests that the series will fast forward about six months to sometime in 1924. And the synopsis for episode 1 reveals that the residents of the mansion will struggle to adjust to the changes of the Roaring Twenties.

The official synopsis reads as follows

Join the Crawleys and staff as they struggle to adjust to the Roaring Twenties. See why old attitudes start to change and Robert is snubbed by the village.

Click here to watch episode 1 online.

The fourth series ended with Lady Edith secretly giving birth to an illegitimate daughter, Lady Mary torn between two suitors, and Anna Bates trying to cope up after being sexually assault by Mr Green.

Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes dished a few tidbits before the premiere episode.

He told The Hollywood Reporter, "I think the theme of the fifth series is that the changing world has finally made it over the park wall and is encroaching on the house, and they are all, in their different ways, finding that they're living in 20th century instead of the 19th."

He continued, "Because I think that was the great issue for the generation of the 1920s – that at the beginning of it, they weren't quite sure how much the world had changed. And by the end of it, in 1929, not helped by the crash, it was quite clear that things had changed irrevocably. During that decade is when they made that discovery."

Season 5 will see Mary (Michelle Dockery) finally moving on from late husband Matthew (Dan Stevens).

Lady Mary had a tough time for the most of the last series but the new episodes will bring out her lighter side.

Also, she will be torn between her two suitors, Lord Blake (Julian Ovenden) and Lord Gillingham (Tom Cullen).

"She's leaning toward one of them, but both are handsome, eligible men," Dockery said of her Downton Abbey character.

The premiere will also deal with last season's shocking rape of Anna (Joanne Froggatt).

While police will investigate whether her husband, Bates (Brendan Coyle), was responsible for the death of rapist Green (Nigel Harman), Anna will have happier things on her mind in season 5.

"She's married to a man she loves and I think she just wants to be happy and be able to enjoy being married and enjoy work until such time as a baby may come their way," Froggatt said

"She wants to have children but most of all she just wants a normal, uneventful life, really."

Watch all the promos here:

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