Everything British for PBS Viewers to Stream in September 2024

Whether or not school started for kids in your area on the last Monday of August 2024 or if they wait until after Labor Day, there's no denying autumn is right around the corner. The summer shows are ending; people are heading home from their vacations; Masterpiece is gearing up for another double-barrel fall, with multiple highly anticipated series debuting in September and October. However, viewers should note that PBS is rapidly becoming an outlier in debuting shows in September, as are most of the broadcast networks. (A thing we'll cover in next week's post covering British stuff to stream that's not on PBS.)

The schedule for the end of summer crashes directly into September, with Hotel Portofino's Season 3 finale airing and streaming on Sunday, September 1. Technically, COBRA's finale has been streaming on PBS Passport since May 2024. However, it streams on Thursday, August 29, on the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel and the PBS app and airs at some point before Monday, September 2, depending on your local station.

As always, Walter Presents will bring new foreign language shows to binge every Friday in September to PBS Passport and the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel. Several of these are brand new series for viewers, though there will be second seasons for a couple of fans' favorites, including the delightful period drama Carmen Curlers. So let's sit in the air conditioning for another week and run down what there will be to watch in September 2024.

Help! We Bought A Village initially arrived at select PBS stations in May 2023 but was lost in the crush of Walters Present titles, which were still dropping in batches then. Season 1 was enough of a flop that PBS let the rights expire, and it exited PBS Passport earlier in 2024. But never say that PBS doesn't keep trying with a show; the producers are convinced it should work. To that end, the HGTV-style home makeover series will arrive with all episodes from its second season on the first of the month; whether or not viewers tune in remains to be seen. Like in Season 1, this will only be available on select PBS Passports and local stations.

All ten episodes of Help! We Bought A Village Season 2 will stream on select PBS Passports and the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel on Sunday, September 1, 2024.

The Spanish-Portuguese thriller The Drought (in Spain: Sequía; in Portugal: Crimes Submersos) debuted in Season 1 in 2022 and won significant awards in both countries. Elena Rivera stars as DCI Daniela Yanes, who is brought on when two 1990s-era skeletons are discovered in a small submerged village on the Spanish-Portuguese border, revealing evidence of a bloody crime. Originally intended to consist of six 70-minute-long episodes, the series has been restructured to eight hour-long installments for the U.K. and American markets.

All eight episodes of The Drought arrive on Friday, September 6, 2024, on PBS Passport and the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel.

Mid-September, Walter Presents brings over the 2020 German series Blutige Anfänger, which it has obnoxiously renamed Rookies (making it very difficult to find considering the dominance of the American series The Rookie) and stars Vienna Blood's Luise von Finckh. The series is like the German version of Blue Lights, "a refreshing look at police work as it follows young police academy recruits" from the Police Academy in Halle an der Saale as they solve their first murders. Each episode centers on a different case, which the students dissect, discuss, and solve while following the various students' lives as they adjust to the difference between being on and off duty. The series is a massive hit in Germany; Season 6 is slated to begin airing on ZDF on September 25, 2024, so there's much more where that came from.

All six episodes of Rookies Season 1 will arrive on PBS Passport and the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel on Friday, September 13, 2024.

Ridley Season 2 leads off PBS' fall slate of Sunday British shows. Adrian Dunbar (Line of Duty) returns as Alex Ridley, a retired detective who can't stop helping his colleagues, especially his former mentee DI Carol Farman (Bronagh Waugh), whose department is understaffed, overworked, and needs his wisdom and experience. Between his adventures, he'll check in to the jazz club he's invested in and pop up on stage to sing a few old chestnuts, giving Dunbar a chance to remind those watching at home that he's a multi-talented star. Like Season 1, PBS is breaking the series, which airs as four feature-length mysteries in the U.K., into eight 45-minute episodes to fit the Sunday schedule.

Ridley Season 2 will debut on Sunday, September 15, at 8 p.m. ET on most local PBS stations, the PBS app, and the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel and air/stream weekly through mid-October. All episodes will be available as a binge for PBS Passport members on premiere day.

The follow-up series to 2022's critical darling Magpie Murders, Moonflower Murders, is an adaptation of the second of Anthony Horowitz's novels in his Susan Ryeland series. (The plan is for a trilogy; Book 3 is due out by the end of the year, and Masterpiece is expected to renew the series and adapt the last novel.) Lesley Manville returns as Susan Ryeland, along with Timothy McMullan as literary detective Atticus Pünd, with a brand-new cold case mystery to solve, and new a-list co-stars including Mark Gatiss (Nolly), Rosalie Craig (Anatomy of a Scandal), Pippa Bennett-Warner (Gangs of London), and Adrian Rawlins (Slow Horses).

Moonflower Murders will debut on Sunday, September 15, 2024, at 9 p.m. ET on most PBS stations, the PBS app, and the PBS Masterpiece Channel and air/stream weekly through mid-October. All episodes will be available as a binge for PBS Passport members on premiere day.

ITV's remake of the 1970s-era Van der Valk, starring Marc Warren, has never been a significant headliner series for Masterpiece, but a solid B-player, holding down September Sundays since it first premiered in the fall of 2020. However, after the first two seasons were aired as intended initially (three feature-length mysteries), Season 3 was broken into six 45-minute episodes to allow other shows to fit into the Sunday schedule. Season 4 will continue that pattern ironically; this means Van der Valk and Ridley (the only two series PBS regularly breaks into two parters) will air almost back-to-back on Sundays. Hopefully, putting them together like this will make the format change feel less jarring.

Van der Valk Season 4 will debut on Sunday, September 15, 2024, at 10 p.m. ET on most local PBS stations, the PBS app, and the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel and air/stream weekly through mid-October. All episodes will be available as a binge for PBS Passport members on premiere day.

Lolita Lobosco (Le Indagini di Lolita Lobosco) returns for Season 2 one year after Season 1 dropped on PBS Passport and the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel in September 2023. Based on the wildly popular novels by Italian writer Gabriella Genisi, Luisa Ranieri (Luisa Spagnoli) stars as the titular Deputy Chief Lolita Lobosco, whose return to her hometown of Bari has led to her investigating the truth behind her father's death in between mysteries-of-the-week which she solves with an all-male team of investigators. Season 3 already aired on RAI in March 2024, so there's more of this to come. 

All six feature-length episodes of Lolita Lobosco Season 2 debut on Friday, September 20, 2024, on PBS Passport and the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel.

For PBS Passport members, Luna + Sophie (SOKO Potsdam) Season 3 has been streaming with all episodes since March 2023. A Walter Presents fan-favorite that grew in popularity via word of mouth, the PBS national schedule eventually started airing the series on linear as part of an attempt to take back the Thursday programming block after not putting anything worth airing there since Mystery! ended in 2007. Season 2 aired on some PBS stations in the summer of 2023; now, Season 3 will debut on linear for September 2024. The series is once again a Thursday premiere, so many local stations will air it off schedule (aka sometime between Thursday night and Sunday night) or not at all, so check those local listings.

Luna + Sophie Season 3 will air on Thursdays beginning September 26, 2024, and stream weekly on the PBS app.

Carmen Curlers Season 1 was delayed from the Walter Presents lineup from its original berth in April 2023 for six months. It finally arrived with all episodes in October, just before Season 2 premiered on Demark's DR network. The period piece focusing on the forging of modern Denmark was a smash hit in its home country; inspired by actual events, the series focuses on entrepreneur Axel Byvang (Morten Hee Andersen), who recruits women from neighboring farms to produce electronic hair curlers. Season 2 will focus on Byvang's attempts to turn his curling products into a global empire by making a deal to import them to America. Season 3 is slated to debut on DR in 2025, so there's more to come.

All seven episodes of Carmen Curlers Season 2 will premiere on Friday, September 27, 2024, on PBS Passport and the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel.