“Downton is catching up with the times we live in,” says Mrs. Hughes in the new season 5 trailer of Downton Abbey which was released by ITV yesterday. As we’ve followed the upstairs and downstairs scandals, joys and sorrows for the past four seasons, we’ve seen old world problems clash with the new, and the new season looks to bring us even more upheaval on the estate.

From an actual fire that looks to be heating things up to Lord Grantham bursting in on Jimmy Kent and an unknown woman in flagrante delicto, this new season promises to keep our pinkies quivering with anticipation as they jut out ever so slightly from our tea cups. Does Mary have a new suitor? Will the Crawleys lose a grandchild by theft? And in grander conversations of society and equality, the servants question the basic human rights they are afforded below stairs while Isobel Crawley asks the same question of the Dowager Countess in the drawing room.

The new season will introduce new cast members Richard E. Grant, Anna Chancellor and Rade Šerbedžija to Downton. Grant joins the show as Simon Bricker, a guest of the Granthams; Chancellor as Lady Anstruther, former employer of Jimmy Kent; and Šerbedžija will play a Russian refuge who fled his homeland after the First World War.

Downton Abbey will premiere in the US on PBS starting January 5, 2015. It premieres in the UK on September 21, 2014 on ITV.

What are you hoping the new season brings to Downton Abbey? Tell us in the comments below!

Feature image via PBS