Is it freak-out time yet? 'Downton' ending soon?

Carson, fetch the smelling salts! Downton Abbey may be ending sooner than we thought.

Well, maybe, if you believe the tabloids in London.

We asked WGBH in Boston, which handles Downton matters in the USA for PBS's Masterpiece, and got a denial. Sort of.

"We get asked this question all the time — the press have been speculating about the end of the series since Season 2," said Ellen Dockser, a spokeswoman for WGBH.

This is similar to what ITV, which airs Downton in the U.K., has been saying in the British media about this story: No comment and never mind old speculation.

The Mirror had everyone over there aflutter Thursday with a story — based on unnamed sources, as usual — that DA would be signing off after the sixth season, scheduled to begin shooting this spring and conclude in the summer.

The Express jumped on it, too.

Both papers reported that the alleged end of the show is "an open secret," and that creator Julian Fellowes is off to America to work on his new project for NBC, The Gilded Age, about fabulously rich Yanks in 19th-century New York, before the era of the income tax.

But Executive Producer Gareth Naeme also pooh-poohed the speculation in Variety.

"We plan the show from year to year, and right now I just want the cameras rolling next month," he said.

Fellowes has already said before in interviews that he couldn't work on both shows at once, and that all series, no matter how popular, must come to an end.

"It's not going to go on forever," he told The Wall Street Journal in December 2013. "It won't be Perry Mason."

The Downton cast just won their second Screen Actors Guild award for an ensemble cast, and five members were in Los Angeles last week to collect it.

Naturally, this led to speculation that they were "taking meetings," as Hollywood types put it, about possible future roles on American TV.

As Michelle Dockery, who plays ice queen Lady Mary on the show, has said before: "It feels as though there are more opportunities for us (in the USA). I love spending time there."

Some Downton fans in the USA took the speculation hard: