You might be familiar with the beautiful game, but any idea of how football actually started? Fortunately, that question is being answered by Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes and new Netflix series The English Game.

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The six-part drama is said to dramatise the origins of the modern sport and explore how the game “reached across the class divide”.

The show’s cast is an impressive line-up of actors, including Kingsman’s Edward Holcroft, Line of Duty’s Craig Parkinson, Kevin Guthrie (Abernathy from Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald) and Charlotte Hope (Ramsay Bolton’s lover Myranda in Game of Thrones).

Also starring is James Harkness (The Victim), Niamh Walsh (Jamestown), Gerard Kearns (Shameless), Daniel Ings (The Crown), Henry Lloyd Hughes (The Inbetweeners), Kate Phillips (Peaky Blinders) and Joncie Elmore (Downton Abbey).

The series will be directed by Birgitte Stærmose and Happy Valley’s Tim Fywell.

Filming for the show has already begun, with the first season set to kick off on Netflix in 2020.

Meanwhile, Fellowes has another big project on the horizon: the Downton Abbey movie, set to be released 13th September 2019.

Starring old favourites – including Dame Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess, Michelle Dockery as Lady Mary and Hugh Bonneville as the Earl of Downton – the film is set to revolve around a royal visit from King George V and Queen Mary.

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The English Game will be released on Netflix in 2020

Authors

Thomas LingDigital editor, BBC Science Focus

Thomas is Digital editor at BBC Science Focus. Writing about everything from cosmology to anthropology, he specialises in the latest psychology, health and neuroscience discoveries. Thomas has a Masters degree (distinction) in Magazine Journalism from the University of Sheffield and has written for Men’s Health, Vice and Radio Times. He has been shortlisted as the New Digital Talent of the Year at the national magazine Professional Publishers Association (PPA) awards. Also working in academia, Thomas has lectured on the topic of journalism to undergraduate and postgraduate students at The University of Sheffield.

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