THE wait is over Downton Abbey fans! Season five gets underway on the new channel, BBC First (DStv channel 119) on Sunday, October 18 at 7.30 pm.

It is early 1924, and a newly-elected working-class Prime Minister and a Labour government effect changes that are rumbling throughout the land – upsetting both those who live above and below the stairs.

The villagers plan for a war memorial and ask Carson to run the committee. He accepts, on the condition that Robert, Earl of Grantham is made the patron – but winds up falling out with both Mrs Hughes and Robert over it.

Meanwhile, Daisy plans to better herself with a mathematics book, much to the displeasure of Carson, Jimmy is dismissed after he gets caught red handed with a Lady, and Edith learns what happened to Michael. However, her relationship to Marigold remains a secret – but for how long?

Ahead of the new season we chat to Hugh Bonneville who plays Robert, Earl of Grantham. And the actor had this to say about his character.

“Whatever Robert, Earl of Grantham, may be, one thing he is not is a snob. He may come from refined beginnings but he takes people on face value. And what he doesn’t like is Sarah Bunting.”

Bunting, played by Daisy Lewis, has eyes for Tom Branson, but she is also an ideologue and when she comes in to the house she immediately takes a stand against everything Robert believes in. He cannot bear her.

“That’s been really fun to play – the sheer, outright loathing of this annoying woman who just buzzes around. It’s partly that she’s left wing in her attitudes, but mainly she’s just bloody rude. So there’s a lot of sparring between them because she tells it like it is with an immense lack of tact, and if there’s one thing that Robert has learnt over the years it is tact.”

Bonneville is quick to defend his character and Bunting may despise everything Robert stands for but Bonneville thinks she misses something in him, too.

“What she doesn’t understand is the humanity behind the apparent monolith of class; that Robert isn’t a sort of fascist or isn’t an unkind employer – or tries not to be. We’ll see in this series that in terms of taking the estate forward or making it viable he’s been quite forward thinking. He realises that he’s got to modernise or die, but he won’t just tear up the landscape and build housing estates: he wants to make sure it’s done with a degree of sympathy for the surroundings and the history of what’s been there before.”

Domestically too, says Bonneville, there are interesting times ahead for the head of the house.

“Perhaps the habit of marriage will show some fissures once more,” he says enigmatically. “Robert and Cora celebrate their 30-something wedding anniversary and I think that’s given Julian [Fellowes] the fun to explore marriages that have lasted a long time.”

And lest we forget, there are several other relationships Robert has to contend with. Not least that of his eldest daughter.

“Robert is very keen for Tony Gillingham to be welcomed into the family but whether or not that happens remains to be seen. I hope we see some happiness on the horizon.”

We also get the return of Shrimpie [Peter Egan], which is great; he comes to visit. And equally we’ve got these two wonderful guest characters, played by Richard E. Grant and Anna Chancellor. It’s always very exciting to have new characters on the Downton estate!”

Bonneville has been playing Robert since the first series launched in 2010 and he approaches each new series with a mixture of nostalgia and excitement.

“I was doing a scene with Brendan [Coyle] the other day in the dressing room and I said, ‘I can remember the very first one we did in this room, in this set.’ It seems extraordinary that the momentum of the show has continued and we’re still getting bigger audiences. The bar is very high still, and the pleasure I get in reading the scripts hasn’t changed.

“Each season, with Julian’s writing, there’s a fresh detail of the character that you didn’t know was there: he’s always surprising you. Everyone has shades, everyone’s contribution to the world of Downton has got many different facets. It’s easy to write the characters off or to pigeonhole them but he’s always reminding us that everyone has three dimensions. That does keep it fresh.”

And in the six months between series all of the cast are able to recharge their batteries with extra curricular activities.

“There is no question that Downton has opened doors for all of us – I would not have done The Monuments Men or Paddington, which we shot last autumn, without Downton. It’s been a calling card for so many of us. Michelle’s made a movie with Liam Neeson and Sophie and Lily filmed Cinderella directed by Kenneth Branagh. It’s hilarious to see how we all go off in our downtime, and come back with stories of adventures. So it’s been an amazing blessing, it really has.”

Yet even when he’s off the Downton set, the Crawley family and their travails are never far away.

“It’s been quite interesting: a lot of the crew on The Monuments Men were avid fans. I was filming both Downton and that film concurrently and I was coming back and forth from one set to the other. One of The Monuments Men producers was virtually pinning me to a wall saying, ‘So what did you shoot last week?’ It is fascinating how people do get hooked on it.

“When you hear of people like John Kerry at the White House a couple of years ago saying that he had insomnia early one morning and picked up this DVD that his wife had been watching at 4am… and he was still sitting there at noon, absolutely hooked on it, yes, it is quite strange. You realise that an astonishing spread of people, from the guy on the street to someone running the foreign policy of an entire country, are responding to the material that we’re making.”

View the trailer here http://www.bbcsouthafrica.com/video/?v=514429