'Bookish' Books Returning Cast for Season 2

If PBS' announcement that Grantchester will end with Season 11 in 2026 feels like the end of an era, that's because it is. The last Masterpiece show still on the air that launched during the Downton Abbey era, Grantchester, was one of the very few series left in the British lineup that debuted before the pandemic, along with Unforgotten and Call the Midwife. With the former's tendency towards two-year gaps between seasons and the latter's hiatus to create a spinoff and movie, 2027 may be the first year PBS's British lineup will consist only of shows that launched after our new normal began.

Luckily, the current roster of newer shows is no slouch, even if you were never into vets saving cows and pigs every week on All Creatures Great & Small. The latest additions, like Patience and The Marlow Murder Club, have been nearly instantaneous hits. But the most significant potential hit heading to PBS in the next six months is undoubtedly Bookish, which we here at Telly Visions refer to as "The Most PBS Show to Ever PBS."

A post World War II period-set mystery-of-the-(every-other)-week series, it stars fan-favorite Mark Gatiss as Gabriel Book, a not-quiet-closeted LGBTQ+ man in a lavender marriage, who owns an antique bookshop. Every other episode, a new crime comes through the door, and Book is called upon to help the police solve the case with his extensive knowledge and the research library of his bookshop. A British mystery show starring Mycroft Holmes from Sherlock, where he solves crimes via his love of reading? Honestly, if PBS had not picked this up, we might have had to riot.