via BuzzFeed

Despite recent reports in the British press, the Julian Fellowes-created period drama isn’t a relic of the past.

Allen Leech as Tom Branson, Tom Cullen as Lord Gillingham, and Michelle Dockery as Lady Mary

Nick Briggs/Carnival Films 2014 for MASTERPIECE

Fans of Downton Abbey, the long-running U.K. drama about the upstairs and downstairs intrigues of the Crawley family and their servants, may have experienced a shock when the Daily Mirror printed a report that claimed that Downton would end after the sixth season, which is set to air in Britain later this year and in early 2016 in the U.S.

Running with the headline, "Downton Abbey WILL end this year as cast look for job offers in America," the report claims that "Writer Julian Fellowes is ditching the popular ITV show, which stars Hugh Bonneville as the Earl of Grantham, after its sixth series."

Yet this statement isn't clearly as definitive as the Mirror would want you to believe — the report states that ITV is looking at replacement programs for its lucrative autumn Sunday night timeslot and further asserts that because cast members are looking for acting roles and Fellowes needs to focus on his long-gestating NBC project The Gilded Age, Downton is coming to a close at the end of the year.

The newspaper quotes an anonymous source who said, "It's an open secret that Downton is ending this year. Some of the actors are keen to let it be known they will be available for work after the summer. Some are interested in the U.S., where Downton is as popular as it is in the U.K."

Considering that many cast members have appeared in multiple other projects while Downton has remained on the air, actors on the show are only bound by single-year deals (as opposed to U.S. standard multi-year contracts), and the show has been plagued by similar rumors of it ending for years, this feels like the thinnest of speculation than anything concrete.

It's a sentiment echoed by Milk Publicity, the third-party publicity firm contracted by ITV to work on Downton.

"We have had this speculation for years, since Series 2 in fact," the publicist wrote in an email to BuzzFeed News "We film for six months of the year, leaving the cast plenty of time to do other work, in fact Hugh has filmed three different jobs in the time between Series 5 and 6, Michelle has filmed Restless and Non-Stop between different series, Maggie and Penelope have filmed the Marigolds etc. On top of that, of course ITV are always looking for other dramas, we are only on air for eight Sundays in a year, leaving 44 others to fill."

ITV meanwhile wouldn't comment on the Mirror's report. "We wouldn't comment on speculative stories about our programmes," an ITV spokeperson wrote to BuzzFeed News in an email.