Everything British for PBS Viewers to Stream in October 2024

Autumn has officially arrived, and the decorative gourds are starting to sprout on people's doorsteps. The year's final months are a high-key time for most PBS stations; this is the point in the year when Ken Burns documentaries arrive, Masterpiece debuts fall favorites, and the period dramas for next year start getting announced. 

October was once when the PBS seasons used to start in earnest; Poldark debuted in October for years in the mid-aughts; heck, back in the 1970s, Masterpiece's very first mystery series, the Ian Charmichael starring Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries, debuted in October. However, the expanding calendar has pushed PBS and Masterpiece back a few weeks, with the first trio of shows now regularly arriving in September. For 2024, that trio is Ridley Season 2, Moonflower Murders (aka Magpie Murders Season 2), and Van der Valk Season 4.

All three of these September debuts will continue into October (and, in the case of Ridley, through October into November), with new episodes streaming on Sundays via the PBS app and the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel. Once Moonflower runs out of episodes, it will be replaced by Masterpiece's delayed-from-spring The Marlow Murder Club. Let's run down everything coming along with it to PBS in October 2024.

The 1970s-era A Ghost Story for Christmas was initially revived in 2005 and aired sporadically until 2013; that's when Mark Gatiss took over the franchise as writer/director with The Tractate Middoth, starring Sacha Dhawan. After a five-year-break, the series returned in 2018 and has since been a yearly tradition, releasing The Dead Room (featuring Simon Callow), Martin's Close (starring Peter Capaldi), The Mezzotint (featuring Rory Kinnear), Count Magnus (starring Jason Watkins) and Lot No. 249 (featuring Kit Harington). These six Gatiss-penned stories have now been rechristened as plain old Ghost Stories and are PBS' big get for Halloween 2024.

All six short films that comprise Ghost Stories will arrive on select PBS Passports and PBS linear networks starting October 1, 2024. As always, check your local listings and streaming services.

Walter Presents’ newest acquisition is the Spanish drama Velvet (Galerías Velvet). Unlike most Walter Presents shows, it is not a police procedural, a murder mystery, or a dark noir thriller. Instead, Velvet is a “feel-good family drama/romance” set in a 1950s-era Madrid fashion house. The central relationship focuses on Alberto, heir to the Velvet empire, who returns home for his father’s latest collection and falls in love with Ana, one of the seamstresses. But this is merely one plot in a web of money, fashion, drama, entanglements, love, jealousies, plots, and counter-plots involving its owners, customers, and residential employees. Season 1 aired on Antena 3 in 2014 and ran four seasons, so there’s more to follow.

All 16 episodes of Velvet Season 1 will stream starting on Friday, October 4, 2024, on PBS Passport and the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel. 

It's been 18 months since new episodes of Paradise (Il Paradiso Delle Signore, also called The Ladies Paradise) arrived. The Italian soap debuted on RAI1 in 2015, (very) loosely based on 1883's Au Bonheur des Dames by Émile Zola. Seasons 1 and 2 ran 20 episodes; Walter Presents brought them over as Seasons 1-4, ten episodes a pop, between January and May 2023. However, 2018's Season 3 switched formats, with 180 episodes a year, making its Walter Presents status uncertain. But "Season 5" is coming, as is the mass turnover that left lead Vittorio Conti (Alessandro Tersigni) as the only carryover character. 

Season 5 explores the fallout from Mori's death and introduces the notorious villain, Umberto Guarnieri (Roberto Farnesi). The series is still going, by the way; it now runs 160 episodes a year and is up to Season 9, which is currently airing in Italy. If Walter Presents plans to keep bringing episodes over, ten at a time, this series will run 120 seasons or more.

All ten episodes of Paradise Season 5 arrive on Friday, October 11, 2024, on PBS Passport and the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel. 

We go from a show with too many episodes per season getting divided up to a franchise that aired one feature-length TV movie a year smashed together into one six-episode batch. Private Detective Dengler (Dengler) is a ZDF production starring Ronald Zehrfeld as the titular Georg Dengler, who resigned in disgrace from the Federal Criminal Police and now works as a private detective. The first film debuted in Germany in April 2015; ZDF followed it up with a movie a year from 2016 to 2021. Notably, though there haven't been any since 29021, ZDF still lists the show as "in production," so new installments could start up soon if this becomes a hit.

All six feature films featuring Private Detective Dengler debut as a single season on Friday, October 18, 2024, on PBS Passport and the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel.

Walter Presents is bringing every kind of show in October! We've got the ones with episodes divided up, the multiple standalones smooshed together, and now shows that never bothered dividing themselves into seasons in the first place. That last category includes The Nordic Murders (Der Usedom-Krimi, technically The Usedom Mysteries, but also airs under Baltic Crimes), which has been running since 2014 on ARD and never once began a Season 2. The series currently has twenty-two installments, the last airing in November 2023. (More are expected in November 2024.) "Season 4" caught viewers up to 2022; Season 5 comprises the three installments from 2023.

All three episodes of The Nordic Murders Season 5 arrive on Friday, October 25, 2024, on PBS Passport and the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel.

The final Friday of October 2024 is extra special because it gets two Walter Presents releases. Along with The Nordic Murders, we also get the 2022 miniseries from ZDF, The Palace (Der Palast), which proved so popular that it was renewed for a second season, coming in 2025. Set in the Friedrichstadt-Palast music hall in the late 1980s, it traces the story of twin sisters Christine and Marlene, who find each other as adults after being separated at birth. They swap lives, navigating the dangers of a divided Germany to learn more about each other. 

All six episodes of The Palace debut Friday, October 25, 2024, on PBS Passport and the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel.

Last but not least, the long-awaited debut of The Marlow Murder Club closes out in October. The series was initially supposed to air in the spring of 2024 alongside its debut on U.K. partner Alibi. However, the last-minute pick-up of Mr Bates vs the Post Office shoved it to fall, which has been a touch awkward, as the show's been renewed and filmed Season 2 already, all before debuting Stateside. The good news is that fans can settle down to watch Samantha Bond (Downton Abbey) and Jo Martin (Doctor Who) run a crime-solving club with absolute assurance the show is already a hit and more episodes are forthcoming.

The Marlow Murder Club debuts on Sunday, October 27, 2024, at 9 p.m. ET, directly following Ridley on most local PBS stations, the PBS app, and the PBS Masterpiece Channel, and will air/stream one episode a week on Sundays until Thanksgiving. All four episodes will be available for members to stream on PBS Passport on premiere day. As always, check your local listings.