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.
Starz
Season 2 of The Serpent Queen opens in 1572 as Catherine (Samantha Morton) and her family take a Grand Tour, a gesture of reconciliation – or propaganda, depending on your level of cynicism – toward their subjects, starving, superstitious peasants disenchanted with the Catholic Church. She’s no longer Regent since her
Starz
The Serpent Queen initially aired in the fall of 2022, and though it was originally hinted to be a limited series, it was a big enough hit that Season 2 was confirmed toward the end of its run. Continuing the story of Catherine de Medici with verve, humor, and a
Amazon Studios/Prime Video
Prime Video's adaptation of My Lady Jane is fiercely feminist, funny, and extremely creative with history, so don’t expect the right sort of gable hoods in this adventurous fantasy. Author Cynthia Hand is one of a trio of writers (with Brodi Ashton and Jodi Meadows) who collaborated
Actors and Actresses
Olivia Cooke, born in 1993 in Manchester, was the sort of child who liked to put on performances in the front garden with her friends. At the age of eight, she joined the Oldham Theatre Workshop, an after-school drama program in her hometown, whose alumni included Anna Friel and Suranne
Actors and Actresses
With his imposing physical presence and interesting, not quite handsome face, and trademark fall of dark hair, Matt Smith has played everything from artists to time lords, princes, and pimps. Smith was born in 1982 in Northamptonshire, and his first love was football. He signed on as a youth player
BritBox
The acclaimed police procedural Blue Lights launches its second season on BritBox as part of the BBC's first moves to take the already successful streaming service and hyper-fuel it with some of the British Broadcasting Corporation's high-profile critical hits. Kicking the new drive to bring in
Actors and Actresses
We know him best as Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle, in the ITV drama Foyle's War, which ran for eight series between 2002 and 2015. But Michael Kitchen has performed in all sorts of roles, from the James Bond franchise to William Shakespeare, on radio, stage, and TV,
Now Stream This
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would probably be astonished and embarrassed at the manifestations of Sherlock Holmes on stage, the big and small screens, radio, comics, board games, and computer games. All over the world, audiences love Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson, and the ink was barely dry on Sir
BritBox
BritBox’s intelligent, playful series McDonald & Dodds challenges and intrigues, thanks to its two titular characters, DCI Lauren McDonald (Tala Gouveia) and DS Dodds (Jason Watkins), and Season 4 debuts on BritBox on May 22, with the first of three feature-length episodes written by Robert Murphy. But before we
Peacock
The global debut of Sky/Peacock’s The Tattooist of Auschwitz was timed for May 2, the anniversary of the fall of Berlin in 1945, and the conclusion of this year’s Passover. It is particularly timely with a rise in anti-Semitism and a right-wing swing both here and in
Lucy Worsley
Popular historian Lucy Worsley’s first TV appearance was in 2009 for the documentary Inside the Body of Henry VIII, joining a medical doctor and a biographer in a special that examined the king’s physical condition on the 500th anniversary of his ascension to the throne. Worsley commented that
Classics Revisited
The French Lieutenant’s Woman, John Fowles’ 1969 postmodern novel, achieved the impossible – a literary work lauded by academics and a popular bestseller. The novel used all the tricks and techniques of a Victorian classic, the author’s voice ever-present, with footnotes, epigraphs, and digressions into whatever he considered significant.