Writer Janet Mullany is from England, drinks a lot of tea, and likes Jane Austen, reading, and gasping in shock at costumes in historical TV dramas. Her household near Washington DC includes a badly-behaved cat about whom she frequently boasts.
Acorn TV
As a mystery, The Black Tower is full of plot holes, a disappointment after the first book dramatized in Acorn TV’s Dalgliesh series, Shroud for a Nightingale, which was tightly and deftly plotted. The Black Tower, however, is troubling. The big reveal is a surprise — the genre demands it,
The Long Call
The Long Call, Britbox’s newest four-part police procedural, has an impressive lineage, is based on a new series from mystery writer Ann Cleeves, whose Vera and Shetland series are longtime audience favorites among Anglophiles. With a great cast, ascreenplay by Kelly Jones (Death In Paradise, Baptiste, Des), and
Acorn TV
Poet detective Adam Dalgliesh has returned in a new series called, obviously enough, Dalgliesh. It’s the first remake since the acclaimed and long-lived ITV/Masterpiece series aired from 1983 –1998 with Roy Marsden as Dalgliesh. This latest adaptation tackles three of the novels by the late P. D.
Manhunt (2019)
The second season of critically acclaimed crime drama Manhunt, now subtitled The Night Stalker, stars Martin Clunes as DI Colin Sutton in the story of another real-life case, drawing from Sutton's own memoirs, about the crimes of a serial rapist that occupied the London police for almost
Documentary
Every bone in my body aches, I nearly drowned, I crawled under barbed wire, I had three migraines, and you know what? It’s been one of the best experiences of my life. I’ve absolutely loved it. --Paul Stone, entertainer Netflix’s five-part documentary series, Churchill’s Secret
Comedy
Director Roger Golby, and writer Simon Nye, the team responsible for The Durrells in Corfu, join forces again with their former lead actress Keeley Hawes for Finding Alice, the latest offering from streaming service Acorn TV, by way of U.K. network ITV. But where The Durrells was sweet and
Documentary
Over ten years ago, Church of England Curate Cath Vickers (do you see the pun there?) was concerned that her small, Darrowby-like town of Bedale, Yorkshire, was losing its sense of community. People no longer had real contact with their neighbors, and she yearned for the days when a
Comedy
Amazon Prime’s three-part series The Pursuit of Love may cover the same time period as Downton Abbey but the similarities between the two period dramas end right there. This is a fast-moving, funny, rude, sexy story about eccentric aristocrats behaving badly, which takes you by surprise with
Movies
The 2020 film Ammonite is written and directed by Francis Lee and features a strong ensemble cast who perform the miracle of expressing emotion tempered with restraint, doing a lot with few words. It is a film about passion that is for the most part understated, with the eloquent palette
The Drowning
The Drowning is a four-part drama currently available on AcornTV and Sundance Now. It originally aired on BBC’s Channel 5 and its cast is full of familiar faces, including Jill Halfpenny and Rupert Penry-Jones. Written by Tim Dynevor, Francesca Brill, and Luke Watson, and directed by Carolina
Too Close
AMC drama Too Close - now streaming on the cable network's premium service AMC+ - packs a lot into its three episodes, and while much of its story is intriguing, the series is disappointing overall. It’s based on the novel of the same name, by Natalie Daniels, the pen
PBS
The series Atlantic Crossing has come in for a fair amount of criticism in Europe for its alleged mishandling of history. It was bound to happen, just as viewers of Netflix’s The Crown, couldn’t always separate fact from fiction. Neither The Crown nor Atlantic Crossing ever claimed to