'The Forsytes' Trailer Promises a Sprawling Tale of Family, Ambition & Love

Masterpiece has released the trailer for its forthcoming new adaptation, The Forsytes, which aims to update the classic story of The Forsyte Saga for a new generation. John Galsworthy's Nobel Prize-winning book series has already been adapted for television twice, both of which are still generally considered to be fairly genre-defining examples of what a costume drama is supposed to be.

The 1967 version was a massive hit on the BBC and here in the U.S. on public television, on such a scale that it helped lay the foundation for what would become the Masterpiece brand at PBS. ITV remade the series in 2002 with Damien Lewis (Wolf Hall) and Gina McKee (The End We Start From), which also crossed the pond to delight PBS viewers. Now a third incarnation, renamed The Forsytes to distinguish it from those earlier television series, is set to arrive next year, following the messy lives of a wealthy family in 1880s London as they wrestle with often conflicting motivations of duty and desire.

Its sprawling story spans four generations and multiple decades, following over half a dozen main characters from the late Victorian era through to the interwar period. The costumes are lavish, the yearning apparent, the family scandals devastating. In short, it's pretty much everything you could want a story like this to be.