Fans of Downton Abbey will be clutching their tiaras in despair, with confirmation the finely embroidered drape is coming down on the hit period drama.
The show's executive producer Gareth Neame has announced that the series, about the wealthy Crawley family who live on the sprawling estate Downton Abbey, will finish with its sixth season.
"Millions of people around the world have followed the journey of the Crawley family and those who serve them for the last five years," he said.
"Inevitably, there comes a time when all shows should end, and Downton is no exception."
Neame said the producers wanted to "close the doors of Downton Abbey when it felt right and natural for the storylines to come together and when the show was still being enjoyed so much by its fans."
The show is currently filming its sixth season, which will air in 2016.
Barring a change of heart, that will be its final season.
In an earlier interview with Fairfax Media, Neame said the modern television series, in the post-Sopranos world, had become "television drama as novel".
As a result, he said, the end has become as important as the beginning.
"That's a fundamental sea change," Neame said. "If you're watching a box set, you're watching a very long movie and the ending is as important as the beginning."
Neame noted that timing was everything, particularly when it comes to "announcing" the end.
Despite persistent media speculation that each successive season of the last few might be Downton's last, Neame has resisted calling "time".
"If you give people two or three years notice that you're ending, I do sometimes wonder whether [you start to view] episodes that are still in the middle act of the show ... with a sense of impending conclusion, and I don't think that's right," he said.
"I think it is good to say there is light at the end of the tunnel; we're now bringing it to conclusion."
Created by Julian Fellowes, the series launched in 2010 and has become one of the most successful British television exports, a hit in both the United States, where it airs on PBS, and in Australia, where it airs on the Seven Network.
