'Trigger Point' Season 2 Leads Off BritBox Trio of High-End Debuts
Once upon a time, not so very long ago, PBS had two nights of British programming a week. Masterpiece Theater, launched in 1970, was a Sunday night staple of public broadcasting and remains so. However, due to specific funding stipulations during its early years, Masterpiece Theater could only air period pieces, which meant that many of the top-rated mystery series didn't make the cut. To work around this, in 1980, WGBH launched a second series, Mystery! The first couple of seasons stuck to period mysteries as PBS established the program, but soon began seeding in more modern series, like Dalgliesh and Morse, the latter of which turned into one of the franchise's longest-running, most-watched franchises. For almost 30 years, Sundays and Thursdays were must-see-TV for Anglophiles until Masterpiece consolidated the two programs in 2008.
Since then, many PBS stations have replaced Thursday Night Mystery! with... British mysteries. (Here in the DC area, we have two different PBS stations that refer to it as "Thriller Thursdays.") Currently a mix of older Mystery! episodes, Walter Presents foreign-language mysteries, and second-run British shows acquired from Acorn TV or BritBox, Anglophiles still tune in on Thursdays to watch Brits get murdered in small, cozy villages. This has not gone unnoticed either. Since being taken over by the BBC, BritBox has started programming Thursday nights with the most prominent titles they've acquired, including Beyond Paradise, McDonald & Dodds, Blue Lights, and The Responder, covering April, May, June, and July, with a few populating Wednesdays, like Sister Boniface Mysteries.
However, with the start of the 2024-2025 TV season in September, BritBox will begin programming weekdays in earnest. September will not just have one or two, but three shows airing on Wednesdays and Thursdays, starting Thursday, September 5 with Trigger Point Season 2. That will be followed by The Bay Season 5 on Wednesdays beginning September 18 and finish up with The Tower Season 3, which debuts on Thursday, September 26, 2024.
