Senior Gabriel Kuhl was watching television with his parents one day when Downton Abbey just happened to come on. Junior Amelie Trieu heard about the show from her math teacher, not expecting to be that interested.

Downton Abbey, a period drama with an ensemble cast, premiered in the U.S. in 2011 on PBS as a British Masterpiece Classic television series. Everything about it screams dated, boring and overly educational to today’s youth–at least in contrast with, say, Pretty Little Liars.

So to what can we attribute its current remarkable commercial success?

In only three seasons, Downton has managed to snag eight Emmy’s, two Golden Globes and one Screen Actors Guild award within only two years of its debut season. It now has over a million fans on Facebook, and an average of eight million viewers tune in each episode, including teenagers.

Its latest season has rendered some students obsessed, including Kuhl and Trieu. “I love Downton Abbey,” Trieu said. “It’s a period drama so it’s a great element of fiction, history and society at the same time; you see how they live, what it’s like. It’s kind of humorous [as well]; I love Maggie Smith.”

Downton Abbey, created by Julian Fellowes, is a period drama set in 1910’s Yorkshire, England and explores the pressures of the social hierarchy on the upper and lower classes coexisting at the Downton estate. Most recently, the youngest daughter and budding revolutionary, Sybil, has been made subject to the worst of fates, and the Downton estate is yet again flirting with the dire consequences of its mismanagement.

Though there may always be divisions in the household, each episode ends with a settled atmosphere, perhaps tricking viewers into watching the next.