On Sunday evening, one Santa Fe aficionado of the hit British miniseries Downton Abbey hooks up his surround sound and projects the episodes onto his living-room wall -- 8 feet wide. Another addict downloaded the Crawley family tree from the Internet, the better to track Lord Grantham's relatives. And he and his wife both took online quizzes to identify which character they are most like. She was the Dowager Countess; he, Mr. Bates, the lord's valet.

They are among the 4.2 million viewers who tuned in Jan. 8 for the first episode in the second season of the period drama by Julian Fellowes about English aristocrats and their servants in the early 20th century. The show is set at a fictional country estate in Yorkshire, England, presided over by the American-born Lady Cora (representing New World money) and her husband, Lord Grantham (an Old World pedigree).

WGBH-TV, the Boston PBS member affiliate that presents the series on the Masterpiece Classic brand, reported that the ratings are double PBS's usual prime-time average and 18 percent higher than the first-season average.

The series, produced by British media company Carnival Films for the ITV network, premiered in England in September 2010 and in the U.S. in January 2011. It won multiple Emmy Awards in the U.S. and became the most successful British costume drama since the 1981 television serial version of Brideshead Revisited.

A third season has been commissioned and will be broadcast in September in Britain, and later in the U.S. For Season 3, actress Shirley MacLaine has been cast to play Martha Levinson, the American mother of Lady Grantham, portrayed by another American actress, Elizabeth McGovern.

Tom Hanks, Martha Stewart and Harrison Ford are all reportedly watching. Fans are hosting watch parties, sometimes with tea and scones and occasionally in Edwardian costume.

If people gathered around water coolers at work anymore, Downton Abbey would be what they would be talking about on Monday mornings. But today they are tweeting -- or posting comments on Facebook -- even while watching the show.

Will Bates' wife ever give him a divorce? Will Lady Mary's indiscretion with the Turkish diplomat become public? Will Lady Sybil break down class barriers and run off with the chauffeur?

Viewers say they love the scenery (Highclere Castle in Berkshire stands in for Downton Abbey), the gorgeous Edwardian clothes (some original) and accessories, the memorable characters, upstairs and down, and the witty scripts.

In Santa Fe, where the show airs at 9 p.m. for most viewers, fans say they make it a point to be home -- or at the very least record the show to watch later.

Diane Burke, who watches with her husband and daughter -- also fans -- said, "I think the beauty of it is that I find each of the characters have so many dimensions. They're all interesting and complicated. And I love the way they reveal the underlying motivations for their behavior."

Burke said she was also interested in the matter of who will inherit Downton Abbey. The house, land and property must pass to a male heir, while Lord Grantham's three direct heirs are all female. But it's 1917, England is at war, and times are changing.

Kristen Carmichael got addicted to the show and then won over her husband, Henry Lopez. ("Nobody is more shocked than I," he noted. "This isn't really my thing.") The couple, who plan to drive back from a trip to Dallas on Sunday evening, are "determined to make it" in time for the broadcast, which they are able to watch at 7 p.m. via DIRECTV.

Lopez's favorite characters are Lord Grantham and Isabel Crawley, the middle-class mother of the lord's distant cousin, Matthew, now the presumed heir to Downton Abbey. "I love the way she stands up to the dowager countess," Lopez said.

Lopez tweets during the episodes, asking friends to choose whether they are "Team Mary" (referring to the cold, eldest daughter of Lord Grantham, who initially spurned Matthew) or "Team Lavinia" (Matthew's fiancée). For himself, he said, "I can't understand why Matthew would fall for Mary. I'm Team Lavinia. She has been so good, so loyal."

Janet Wise, a devoted fan, said she doesn't understand Mary, either. "If I could slap that Mary. Really. You don't want [Matthew], I'll take him." The initial romance between them appeared to be "made in heaven in my eyes," she said, but Lady Mary was "too blind and too calculating."

On the other hand, Wise said she didn't see anything good coming out of Mary's relationship with the crass newspaper magnate, Sir Richard Carlisle.

Wise and her husband, Ed Moreno, missed Season 1, but after hearing of its popularity, they watched via Hulu, a subscription service for streaming video and TV shows, and got hooked.

They both love Maggie Smith as the dowager countess and appreciate her one-liners (To Lady Edith, who is learning to drive: "You are a lady, not Toad of Toad Hall." On whether Lady Sybil, the youngest and most liberated daughter, is entitled to her own opinion: "No, she isn't until she is married, and then her husband will tell her what her opinions are.") "Boy, she sure can zing them," Wise said.

Downton Abbey junkie Laura Mulry and a friend in Houston text throughout the show about various plot developments. They both like Bates, his lordship's valet, whose love for the housemaid Anna, in typical soap-opera style, is being thwarted by his scheming, unfaithful wife. "This is my life," she admitted. "I wait for Bates. Isn't that pathetic? Me and my kitties -- and a glass of wine."

For those who crave more than the actual episodes, PBS's website offers cast interviews and the chance to chat online with the actors, vote for your favorite character and even watch previous episodes online. The site contains synopses of each upcoming episode -- and a warning about plot spoilers.

There is also a video of a New York City news conference with Masterpiece executive producer Rebecca Eaton asking some of the questions and taking others from an audience hungry for every snippet of detail about the show (including how the cast handled the proper eating of asparagus in 1917 and whether the costumes are comfortable -- no).

There's even a drinking game created for Downton Abbey fans that calls for taking a sip, just a sip, of claret -- or something stronger -- every time Carson decants wine through cheesecloth, every time Lady Edith uses the word slut, or every time anyone says the word valet which rhymes with mallet. (There are many more occasions allowed under the rules of the game.)

Contact Anne Constable at 986-3022 or aconstable@sfnewmexican.com.


• Watch Downton Abbey on Masterpiece Classic, 9 p.m. Sundays on KNME, Jan. 8 to Feb. 19

• Watch online: www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/watch/index.html

To find out which character you are on Downton Abbey:

• www.weta.org/tv/picks/downtonabbey/quiz

• www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/quiz/2011/sep/13/downton-abbey-character


To connect on twitter and Facebook, follow links from:

• www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/connect/index.html