The "Angel of Inferno" Brings Eliza a New Rival on 'Miss Scarlet & the Duke'

To its credit, Miss Scarlet & the Duke is a series that's almost always the furthest thing from traditional. Part of that is due to its unconventional heroine, the only female detective in London, who refuses to sit down and shut up the way the men around her always seem to want her to. However, part of it is also the show's unapologetically feminist lens; even the most mundane cases are often grounded in specific ways that affect women's lives or are particular to the female experience.

Maybe it's that "Angel of Inferno" is the rare Miss Scarlet episode that does nothing with that lens that makes it feel so uninteresting. It's an hour where Eliza ultimately triumphs over the men who underestimate and discount her, and we always love that for her. (And us!) But the episode's central plot focuses on a blackmail attempt using a rare plant poison, which may be very interesting on paper, but is desperately dull onscreen, mainly because it has so little to say about our heroine or the world she lives in.

It also repeatedly forces her into situations where she's forced to react to men rather than forge her own path. (She quite cleverly turns this all on its head by the end of the hour, coming up with a plan that not only publicly embarrasses her new competitor but humiliates him in front of future clients to boot, but the story takes the long way round to get there.)