Everything British Coming to PBS Passport in November 2023

We've reached November, and the holidays are just around the corner. World on Fire, Annika, and Hotel Portofino are half over, and the Christmas specials are going to be descending upon us in a month or so. Sunday nights are packed with British mysteries; Thursdays (for some local stations) are continuing to run the Canadian Midsomer Murders, while Walter Presents continues to experiment with airing some of its most popular offerings alongside it. 

But the shows that hit the airwaves aren't the only things streaming on PBS Passport for November. (Though they are the ones you'll hear the most about on most local stations.) As always, PBS Passport members get exclusive access to other series and debuts, including brand new Walter Presents shows every week, and this month will have multiple debuts mid-month, with a few shows coming over from Acorn TV that PBS viewers may not even have heard of, let alone seen. And, of course, we'll be celebrating William Shakespeare's 400th anniversary of the 400th folio printing this month, courtesy of Great Performances.

So settle in, grab a caramel apple, and fire up the turkey because Black Friday is coming, and the clocks are falling back. It's streaming TV time.

Doc Martin's final season aired just under a year ago in the U.K. and then streamed on Acorn TV to follow. Now it comes to PBS and PBS Passport six months after Season 9 debuted in June. Season 10, the show's final run of episodes, arrives on select PBS Passports for streaming in November, followed by a debut on linear in December. All regular cast members reprise their roles, including Martin Clunes, Caroline Catz, Dame Eileen Atkins, Ian McNeice, and Joe Absolom. 

The final season runs nine episodes, eight regular season episodes, and a Christmas special series finale, all of which debut on select PBS Passports on Wednesday, November 1, 2023.

Walter Presents first brought over the Danish series Dicte in February 2023, with Season 2 following in August. Now the third and final season of the series arrives on PBS Passport, featuring Iben Hjejle as the titular crime reporter Dicte Svendsen, solving crimes in her hometown of Aarhus, while raising her teenage daughter. The final season sees her remarried and attempting to become a novelist, but when her new husband gets posted to Lebanon to cover the brewing conflict, things don't go the way she planned. 

The final ten episodes of Dicte join the first two seasons on PBS Passport on Friday, November 3, 2023.

Season 1 of the Walter's Choice series, Morden I Sandhamn or The Sandhamn Murders, which was retitled Murder in Sweden (googlability of title be damned), arrived in May 2023. The series, which is still airing in its home country, is an adaptation of Viveca Sten's novels of the same name. Now Season 2 arrives, starring Alexandra Rapaport as lawyer-turned-crime solver Nora Linde.

All three episodes of Season 2, subtitled "I Den Innersta Kretsen" ("In The Inner Circle"), arrive Friday, November 10, 2023.

All twelve episodes of The Good Apprentice (L'Allieva) Season 1 arrived via Walter Presents in April 2023. The Italian medical drama stars Alessandra Mastronardi as Alice Allevi, a student studying forensic medicine, torn between an arrogant doctor Claudio Conforti, the son of the institute manager, Arthur, and her passion for her work. The series ran three seasons on RA; now, Season 2 joins Season 1 on PBS Passport with another twelve-episode run. There's no arrival date for Season 3, but it seems likely to follow soon.
All episodes of The Good Apprentice (L'Allieva) Season 2 arrive on PBS Passport on Friday, November 10, 2023.

Most PBS viewers know and love the original Australian Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, starring Essie Davis as the Hon. Miss Phryne Fisher. Less people know about the 1960s-era spinoff that ran on Acorn TV for two seasons, Ms Fisher's Modern Murder Mysteries, where her long lost niece, Peregrine Fisher (Geraldine Haskwell), discovers her aunt has left her everything after disappearing. Both seasons debut on PBS Passport and on linear this month; hopefully, audiences will love the niece as much as they did her aunt.

Both seasons of Ms Fisher's Modern Murder Mysteries (12 episodes in all) arrive on Wednesday, November 15, 2023.

Likewise, The Brokenwood Mysteries is another series that has been hiding away on Acorn TV PBS viewers may not be familiar with, but should. The New Zealand set mystery series has been running since 2014 and was renewed for Season 10 in mid-2023. Starring Neill Rea as DSS Mike Shepherd and Fern Sutherland as DC Kristin Sims, solving crimes in the small town of Brokenwood, population 5000, and declining every week.

The first six seasons each ran four episodes; the newer ones run six. PBS Passport will stream the first two seasons, eight episodes in all, starting Wednesday, November 15, 2023.

A late-breaking ETA, announced after this post went live: Now And Then – The Last Beatles Song is coming to local PBS stations and PBS Passports. Due to Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr's commitment to public television, PBS is being granted the rights to air and stream the 12-minute making-of documentary Now And Then – The Last Beatles Song that accompanies the above single, released at the top of November, explaining how the two remaining Beatles resurrected the ghost of John Lennon and George Harrison to create one final song.

Now And Then – The Last Beatles Song premieres on most PBS stations and PBS Passports starting November 16, 2023, and streams through the end of the month. This will vary station by station, and the 12-minute runtime means every station will air it at a different time, so check your local listings.

The first season of Love and Sacrifice (Sacrificio de Amor) arrived in April 2023, and Season 2 followed in June. Set in 1913, the series stars Francesco Arca as Brando, a quarryman who initiates a labor revolt due to working conditions in the Corradi mines, setting off a wave of unionization across the country. However, it also only ran two seasons on Canale 5 from 2017-2018, but June's "Season 2" only included the first six of that, so "Season 3" is really the rest of Season 2 and the conclusion of the series.

The final episodes of Love and Sacrifice arrive on PBS Passport on Friday, November 17, 2023.

William Shakespeare's first full, complete, posthumously published works turn 400 on November 8, 2023, and Great Performances is marking the anniversary with Making Shakespeare: The First Folio. The special will deep dive into the history behind the struggle to gather all of Shakespeare's known works into one place, including how it saved 18 plays from being lost to history. It also focuses on the continuing efforts by the company to keep Shakespeare relevant for modern audiences and how his works can speak to the essential human condition so profoundly that they've transcended centuries, mediums, and even the very empire that spawned them.

This is a PBS App only streaming show this month, arriving Friday, November 17, 2023. It will come to PBS Passport next month, on Saturday, December 16, 2023.

Along with Doc Martin Season 10, PBS Passport is bringing the special Farewell Doc Martin, a stand-alone special celebrating ten seasons of the series across 18 years. Narrated by Caroline Catz, who played Doc’s wife, Louisa, Farewell Doc Martin shares an intimate view into the makings of the world of Doc Martin, his family, and the community of Portwenn. 

Farewell Doc Martin premieres on select PBS Passports on Thursday, November 23, 2023.

All of you Walter Presents fans remember when Giovanna's Journey premiered at the end of June 2023 with eight episodes. Despite the name, it was really the second season of the Italian series Furore, which ran from 2014-2018. The stories were tangentially related enough that you don't need to have seen it to watch Giovanna’s Journey. However, the "eight episodes" were all 45 minutes long, when the original eight episodes of the series were 90 minutes, making the series only the first half. Many of you wrote in confused, since PBS Passport didn't even realize the mistake until after people started watching it. 

Finally, the second half of the season is now here, arriving Friday, November 24, 2023. Thank you for your patience, and thank you all for writing in and correcting us.