Stuart Martin

Miss Scarlet & The Duke's second episode doesn't make things easy for Eliza just because she has a detective agency.

Miss Scarlet & The Duke premieres with the arrival of the first female private detective in Victorian London. 

The Masterpiece trailer for the upcoming period mystery series Miss Scarlet and the Duke is feminist, crime-solving fun. 

Buzzy period mystery series Miss Scarlet and the Duke is officially coming to Masterpiece in January 2021. 

Worlds are colliding for Masterpiece fans - the worlds of period drama and mystery meet in Miss Scarlet and the Duke, a new series heading to PBS at some point in 2020.

Kate Phillips, probably best known among Americans for her role as Linda Shelby on Peaky Blinders, has also appeared in such familiar production as The Crown, Wolf Hall, and the Downton Abbey movie. Here, she stars as Eliza Scarlet, the first-ever female detective in 19th century London. Stuart Martin - familiar to PBS fans as Silas Sharrow on Jamestown - plays her partner "The Duke". 

Previously on Jamestown: Jocelyn, Verity, Pedro and James Read all head off to search for the mariners who originally brought slaves to Jamestown. Along the way, Joss gets shot with an arrow in the gut, but doesn’t die thanks to James savvy medical skills, which involve digging around in her body with a dirty knife. It’s fine. Why start doing hygiene now? Afterward, as an injured Jocelyn continues to traipse through the countryside, Verity decides to give her a pep talk about James Read and how great he is and eventually both of these idiots admit they’re in love – kind of. But Jocelyn isn’t down to give up her freedom to any man Elsewhere, Temperance has decided she’s over everything and enlists the help of Maria to help drive her husband insane so they can go back to England with their unborn baby.  For a full rundown of all this weirdness, our Episode 7 recap is this way.

As most viewers probably already knew coming into this, Season 3 of Jamestown is the series’ last. Whether this is due to poor ratings, expensive filming costs or simply the cast’s desire to move on is unclear. But though the series’ finale does try to tie up most of the (many, many) outstanding plotlines this show, Jamestown somehow manages to end with both a bang and a whimper, dedicating its final moments to the long-hinted-at native attack on the colony, which historically did kill hundreds of settlers. But since that climactic moments takes place during the episode’s final minutes, it feels like nothing so much as a cliffhanger into Season 4 that never got to go anywhere.

Previously on Jamestown: Since Temperance is pregnant, Yeardley decides to write a will, in which he transfers ownership of Pedro and Maria to his unborn child. Everyone in town is suddenly real upset about this, which is somehow a step further than owning people generally, flogging them and forcing them to pick your crops for free, I don’t know. But whatever, suddenly James, Verity and a bunch of other townsfolks are real invested in finding the mariners who brought slaves to Jamestown in the first place, though the reasons for that are wildly unclear beyond the fact that Pedro would like to kill them for what they did. Which I suppose make sense. And despite the fact that Crabtree is a powerful man who could stop Yeardley from doing, well…basically anything, he decides to let himself be arrested instead. See our recap of Episode 6 for more.

Just when it seemed as though Jamestown had lost the particularly bonkers style of storytelling that made it such fun to watch, the series comes roaring back with an installment that features everything from unhygienic outdoor surgery, drug-fueled nightmare visions, an out of wedlock pregnancy, a murder cover-up and some super awkward match-making.

Previously on Jamestown: Chacrow moves into Jamestown to work for Yeardley and kill Silas Sharrow, on the orders of the Pamunkey chief. Silas seems weirdly fine with this, but it all turns out fine anyway, since Chacrow can’t do it after he has some sort of religious experience while watching Meredith Rutter try to drunkenly commit suicide in a fit of guilt over driving his adopted son Tam away. Elsewhere, Joss drugs Crabtree and figures out that he’s got the King’s Seal, which means he’s actually the most powerful man in the colony, and not just a weirdo who likes to sell furniture no one asked for. Want more details? Our full recap is this way. 

Season 3 is so strange, y’all. And this episode isn’t any different

Previously on Jamestown: This season continues to spiral into the absurd, as the entire colony becomes obsessed with a random palomino horse from…somewhere, and then spends the bulk of the episode chasing it through the woods. (I wish I was making this up.) But, thanks to Henry acquiring said magical animal after a complicated series of trades and tricks, he swaps it to Yeardley in exchange for securing his brother Silas’ safe return to Jamestown. I don’t know about y’all, but I’d rather have the horse. Need more details on this madness? Our recap of Episode 4 is here.

Originally, Jamestown was a show about women. Three very different women, brought to a strange and often hostile land, who struggled to build new lives for themselves. And, despite the ridiculous heights of…well, ridiculousness, that this show reached during its first two seasons, that fact is what held it together. What made Jamestown worth watching, even when it made up its historical facts out of whole cloth. 

But, unfortunately, like so much of this season, this episode seems to exist almost entirely to tell the stories of men.

Previously on Jamestown: Pedro and Maria attempt to run away from the colony, but their efforts are thwarted thanks to (who else?) Yeardley, despite the fact that the rest of the town conspires to help them get out. Silas tries to do us all a favor by killing the Governor with a Pamunkey bear trap but his goal is thwarted by Pedro, of all people. He saves Yeardley’s life even though he despises him, because we aren’t allowed to have nice things, I guess. If you want more details, our full recap of Episode 3 is right this way.

If last week’s episode of Jamestown was the series’ dullest hour to date, this one is perhaps the most bizarre, spending most of its time on a truly weird hunt for a palomino horse that manages to involve most of the town.