Summer movie season is officially upon us and with it the highly anticipated sequel Star Trek Into Darkness, which boasts a raft of British talent of various stripes, but has mostly picked up buzz for featuring Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch in what is sure to be his big breakout Hollywood role. (He’s playing [SPOILER]. Ha – as though one would ever risk the wrath of the internet for writing that out this weekend.)

Real spoiler this time: Cumberbatch is fantastic in the film and is getting showered with lots of well deserved kudos and review mentions and general accolades and the next time you see his name in a trailer, you’re going to know who he is. It’s that kind of performance. (For those of us who’ve been fans of his work for some time, this is a pretty awesome week!)

So, welcome to Cumberbatch mania, all you folks who have stumbled online after seeing Star Trek and are wondering who that rather posh looking bloke with the great hair and amazing cheekbones happens to be. We’re here for you. We know the deal. We’re happy to help. You want to know where to go next? Here are a few suggestions. 

Dame Maggie Smith, the indomitable Dowager Countess of Downton Abbey and general luminary of stage and screen who has won seven BAFTA awards and two Oscars is certainly deserving of an official portrait in Britain’s National Portrait Gallery.  It’s a great honor, and one which she has certainly earned.

So, it’s definitely a fantastic thing that the great actress has been so honored – Smith’s portrait was revealed at the London museum on April 9.  However, well, it could be said that this particular bit of artwork is not quite the equal of the lady it’s depicting. (In my ever so humble opinion of course. Someone convince me I’m wrong!)

Have a look for yourselves below. 

Are you missing Downton Abbey’s Matthew Crawley? Has the fact that star Dan Stevens changed his hair dramatically upset your day? Well, then, do I have the movie for you – Stevens' latest upcoming project is a film called Summer in February, and it’s a period drama set on the eve of World War I, in which Stevens plays a character who is agonizing over his feelings regarding a woman he can’t have. 

Sound familiar, Matthew fans?  

The film is based on the Jonathan Smith novel of the same name and tells the story of the dramatic real-life love triangle between painter Alfred Munnings (Dominc Cooper), his best friend Gilbert Evans (Stevens) and fellow artist Florence Carter-Wood (Emily Browning). As you can see from the trailer below, Summer in February appears to feature a lot of angst and drama and crossed romantic signals and everything that we’re all missing in a world without Downton at the moment.

Take a look for yourself below. 

Many Downton Abbey fans around the world are processing the fact that star Dan Stevens will not be returning to the megahit costume drama for Series 4. We’re all dealing with that in different ways. For some of us, it involves eating a lot of ice cream, or indulging in embarrassing late night Series 1 marathons, or obsessively stalking tracking the actor’s every post-Crawley family move. Sometimes all three. (Not that I know anything about this personally. Cough.)

And Stevens has certainly been busy since departing Downton, with a variety of different projects, some of which sound quite interesting. Want to know what he’s been up to since leaving hunting dogs and period costumes behind? Click through for more – but if you still haven’t seen the Downton Abbey Series 3 finale for some reason , you’ll probably want to bookmark this post for later, because it’s got SPOILERS in it. 

Because we haven’t done this in a while, let us consider: What movies is Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch busy signing up to star in right now?

You might think that we’ve got enough Cumberbatch films (Cumberfilms?) to be going on with for a bit, what with his upcoming roles in Star Trek Into Darkness, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, The Fifth Estate, Twelve Years a Slave and August: Osage County. Oh, and also that highly-anticipated third series of Sherlock that he's currently filming at the moment.  But you would be wrong about that, because apparently Mr. Cumberbatch is either magical or an animatronic Cylon who doesn’t sleep, because he’s lined up even more films in what must now be considered his personal campaign to take over the multiplexes of America. (I’m still okay with it, though.) 

Though people may leave Downton Abbey, they never really leave Downton Abbey, if you know what I mean. Meaning that, even though we may not see certain actors around the estate anymore, it doesn’t mean that we stop caring about what they are up to these days and where we can see them in future.  

Jessica Brown Findlay, otherwise known as Downton’s Lady Sybil, has a brand new project coming to UK TV in the not-too-distant future. She’ll be starring in a television adaptation of Kate Mosse’s global best-selling novel Labyrinth for UK network Channel 4, alongside John Hurt, Merlin’s Katie McGrath, Great Expectations’ Vanessa Kirby and Harry Potter star Tom Felton (who is sporting some…interesting hair).

A two-part fantasy series, Labyrinth interweaves the stories of two women born centuries apart. Present day archaeologist Alice discoverers two shattered skeletons and a labyrinth-engraved ring in a cave, while 800 years ago in medieval France, a young herbalist named Alais is entrusted with hiding the secrets contained within three sacred books. All of these things do connect eventually.

Watch the trailer for Labyrinth below.

All Downton Abbey fans are probably going to want to make sure that they tune in to CBS news program 60 Minutes this weekend (February 17) because it’s going to be a rare opportunity to see an interview with the Dowager Countess herself, Dame Maggie Smith!

We all love Dame Maggie and her fantastic portrayal of Downton’s indomitable Dowager Countess, but it’s common knowledge that the star rarely makes public appearances like this. The two-time Oscar winner has a shelf full of awards for her portrayal of Violet Crawley , including multiple Golden Globes and Emmys, but the actress has never picked any of them up herself. Smith is notorious for never attending awards shows and the actress hardly ever does promotional appearances or interviews like this. (Read: Also pretty much never.) Get a sneek peek at Dame Maggie's CBS interview after the jump.

Awesome news: Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch is lending his (distinctive) voice to long-running animated series The Simpsons this weekend, on Sunday, February 10.

Sad news: His appearance will not be as the world’s only consulting detective, despite the fact that I couldn’t resist using this amazing Sherlock fan art as the main image on this post. Yes, I know, I was pretty upset about this revelation too. I can only imagine how his particular brand of Sherlock Holmes would feel about the residents of Springfield (What’s it like in your funny little brains/it must be so boring?)

Anyway, because we all need to take what bits of Cumberbatch we can get as we suffer through our own personal versions of the Great Hiatus, it’s likely that we’re all fine with this. And what better sign that an actor we all love has really hit it big than the chance to do The Simpsons? (Everyone, it would seem, has done a guest bit on this show.) Go on, you know you want to read more. 

Sherlock guest star Lara Pulver, who stock has risen considerably in the wake of her turn as an often intriguingly dressed (or not) Irene Adler in A Scandal in Belgravia, will soon star as another rather infamous woman. Pulver has been tapped to portray the wife of James Bond creator Ian Fleming in a new drama for Sky Atlantic.

The new-four part series, tentatively titled Fleming, will explore the life of the 007 scribe, which was frequently as dramatic as any Bond film. According to Variety, the series will be set during World War II when British Naval Intelligence recruited the future author for its undercover campaign against the Nazis. Fleming’s wartime experience provided much of his inspiration for Bond and in true art-imitating-life fashion, Fleming himself was also a bit of a womanizer with a taste for alcohol. (What do you want to bet he liked his martinis shaken, not stirred?)

Production has officially begun on That WikiLeaks Movie with Sherlock’s Benedict Cumberbatch. Now known as The Fifth Estate – presumably to avoid having to pay the licensing fee to David Bowie to use previously rumored title The Man Who Sold the World - the film is set to dramatize the controversial life of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange after the 2006 launch of the WikiLeaks website. (Personally I’m rather sad about the loss of the previous title, if only because it seems a much better fit.)

Written by The West Wing alum Josh Singer, the film is based on the books Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World’s Most Dangerous Website and Wikileaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy. Bill Condon, most recently of The Twilight Saga, is directing and has assembled an all-star cast that’s positively bursting with familiar faces and talent, including Daniel Bruhl, Laura Linney, Anthony Mackenzie, David Thewlis, Peter Capaldi, Dan Stevens and more. Translation: it’s got “awards bait” written all over it.

Still and all though, since this movie is basically the reason that production on Sherlock Series 3 got pushed back, it better be excellent, right? Weigh in for yourself below and get your first look at Cumberbatch as Assange – yes, complete with trademark white-blonde hair. It’s a bit of an adjustment to be sure (and a look that I doubt will set many teenage girls screaming a la his appearance in Star Trek), but oddly, creepily Cumberbatch really does looks like Assange. It’s merely unfortunate that Assange himself is, in fact, a bit creepy looking. See the larger version below.