'Belgravia: The Next Chapter' Undergoes Complete Casting Overhaul

Julian Fellowes' follow-ups to Downton Abbey have struggled to follow in the wake of global success. Though Belgravia didn't spend a decade in development hell moving from platform to platform like The Gilded Age or attempt to make Americans care about English footballing history like The English Game, ITV chose not to partner with public television for the historical drama. Instead, ITV co-produced with James Bond studio MGM for its streaming service, then known as Epix, which MGM had recently taken full ownership of after buying out co-owners Paramount and Lionsgate. However, the series failed to jumpstart Epix, and Season 2 seemed dead in the water.

Enter Amazon Studio, which, after failing to buy the James Bond franchise for Prime Video, decided to buy MGM wholesale instead. The move landed them several extra properties as a bonus, one of which was Epix, which, like Starz, both airs on linear as a network and has a streaming service. With Amazon already the owner of Prime Video and IMDbTV, which it recently rechristened Amazon Freevee, this third service was free to become its higher-end flagship, which it redubbed MGM+. One of its first acts, even before the rebrand, was to renew Belgravia for a second round of episodes.

Belgravia's first season was based on Fellowes' own novel of the same name, centered around the real-life 1815 Duchess of Richmond's ball, which occurred the night before the Battle of Quatre Bras, in which Napoleon's forces slaughter the Englished before his ultimate defeat in the Battle of Waterloo. It covered all of the book's main plot points, leaving Season 2 to go where it wished, which is apparently to time jump ahead to the next generation of Belgravia residents. The new series picks up in 1865, 25 years after the first one, and sports an entirely new cast.