ITV announced Friday afternoon that three actors are joining Downton Abbey season 5.

Richard E. Grant (pictured above) will play Simon Bricker, who “visits Downton Abbey as a guest of the Granthams.” The actor is best known for his involvement with the Doctor Who franchise, most recently as Dr. Simeon (The Great Intelligence).

Anna Chancellor will play the guest role of Lady Anstruther, while actor Rade Sherbedgia will “play a Russian refugee, Kuragin who has fled the Russian revolution after the First World War.”

ITV also announced that series 4 guest cast members Dame Harriet Walter and Peter Egan will reprise their roles of Lady Shackleton and Lord Flintshire.

Though Downton Abbey series 4 only finished airing in the U.K. this past December, it looks like scripts are already well in development for the fifth outing of the beloved Edwardian drama.

Said one of the show’s producers in a statement, “We are delighted to welcome these talented actors to the world of Downton. The characters they play are set to bring yet more excitement and intrigue to the show.”

If history is any indication, series 5 will premiere on ITV in the U.K. in September 2014, while PBS will run the show in the United States beginning in January 2015.

Meanwhile, the seventh episode of season 4 airs on PBS this Sunday, February 16 at 9 p.m. eastern/pacific. Check out a clip from the episode in a story we published this morning.

We expect more cast members to be announced in the coming months as more scripts call for more actors. We hope that no current cast members plan to leave between series 4 and series 5, though we’re not getting our hopes up because it seems to happen all too often. The gap between series 3 and 4 saw multiple big departures – most notably by the actors who played O’Brien and Matthew.