'Lucy Worsley Investigates' Season 2 Treats Historical Gore with Care
If you aren’t already familiar with historian and presenter Lucy Worsley, get ready to meet the only person on Earth who can make reading microfilm compelling. Worsley has presented British history documentaries on everything from Sherlock Holmes to Marie Antoinette. Her somewhat catchall series, Lucy Worsley Investigates, is back for a second season of tastefully handled historical gore and intrigue.
The show doesn’t have very clear parameters of topic or time period, so viewers might not know what to expect. Despite “investigates” in the title, Worsley examines more than historical cold cases. The show’s self-described objective is to “re-investigate some of the most dramatic and brutal chapters in British history.” In Season 1, this included episodes on Britain’s witch hunts, the Black Death, the murders of King Edward IV’s young sons, and King George III’s struggles with mental illness.
If topics like the Black Death and the witch trials sound too big for one episode of television, that’s because they are. But Worsley, ever the social historian, zooms in on stories of individuals illuminating more significant themes of the times. It appears that Season 2 has learned from Season 1’s heavier lifts, though, with each episode focusing on an individual person or discrete event rather than decades-long behemoths.
