'Making Masterpiece' Podcast Launches At the End of February

The year 2021 is a big one for anniversaries on PBS. It's the tenth anniversary of Downton Abbey's premiere season; it's the 25th anniversary of the show's first major rebrand from Masterpiece Theater. (The series become Mobile Masterpiece Theater in 1998, which then changed again to Masterpiece as we know it today starting in 2008.) But the big one, of course, is that PBS's experiment in bringing over the best and brightest of British Television is now 50. The program was first launched by WGBH Boston on Jan. 10, 1971, making this its half-centennial.

Fans have already experienced part of the celebratory year, starting with Elizabeth Is Missing and then the revival of All Creatures Great & Small. But with the pandemic upending much of the spring season, Masterpiece had to find other ways to celebrate as well. So it turned to the most 2020s way of doing it: a podcast. The three-part deep dive into all series short and long stars Masterpiece Studio host Jace Lacob and promises to feature "the inside scoop on everything from Downton Abbey to Upstairs, Downstairs."

Check out the trailer for the podcast, the first episode of which arrives on Feb. 28.