`This is bigger than football,` warns Netflix's trailer for the Julian Fellowes-penned period soccer drama The English Game. The streamer has unveiled the first look at the 42-produced series, which will launch globally on the service on March 20.

From "Downton Abbey" creator and "Gosford Park" writer Julian Fellowes. Based on true events, this 19th century drama follows two footballers on opposite sides of a class divide who changed the game - and England - forever.

The English Game, which is written and exec produced by Fellowes, is a six-part series that charts the origins of football and how those involved in its creation reached across the class divide to establish the game as the world's most popular sport.



The series will star Edward Holcroft (Kingsman: The Golden Circle), Kevin Guthrie (Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald), Charlotte Hope (The Spanish Princess), Craig Parkinson (Black Mirror: Bandersnatch), James Harkness (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story), Niamh Walsh (Jamestown), Gerard Kearns (Last Kingdom), Joncie Elmore (Downton Abbey), Sam Keeley (Anthropoid), Daniel Ings (The Crown), Kate Dickie (Prometheus), Henry Lloyd Hughes (Killing Eve), Kate Phillips (Peaky Blinders), Ben Batt (Captain America: The First Avenger), Sylvestra Le Touzel (The Death of Stalin), Harry Michell (Devils) and Anthony Andrews (The King's Speech).

Directed by The Spanish Princess' Birgitte Stærmose and Happy Valley's Tim Fywell, it is produced by Traitors' Rhonda Smith with Rory Aitken, Eleanor Moran and Ben Pugh exec producing for 42 and Ben Vanstone co-exec producer.