A ship flings Alexandra Roach's Helene onto an 1830s English beach, where Pastor Alex Macqueen's Edmund rescues, courts and marries her within days, convinced she is virginal. She isn't. Back in his bleak parsonage, housekeeper Julia Davis's Dorothy stalks the corridors clutching a lock of Edmund's dead first wife, scheming to expose the newcomer as impure while lusting after the master herself. Village physician Rufus Jones's Dr. Foggerty offers Helene both medical care and a possible escape route, though his motives are as murky as the coastal fog. Over ten episodes, secrets, corpses and bodily fluids pile up while Julian Barratt's velvet-voiced narrator delivers increasingly unreliable commentary.
Sky Atlantic's first original comedy debuted in August 2012 with 246,000 viewers, the channel's second-biggest launch after The Borgias. It won Best Sitcom and Best New Comedy Programme at the 2012 British Comedy Awards, then secured Davis a BAFTA for Best Comedy Writing in 2013. A second series arrived in December 2015 as two hour-long specials, pushing the total running time to eight half-hours and two feature-length episodes. Produced by Baby Cow and shot on a single camera, the show filters Jane Eyre through Davis's trademark gothic smut, landing jokes about religion, repression and syphilis in the same breath.
Production Details
Sky Atlantic / 2 Seasons / 10 Episodes / 2012
Created by: Julia Davis
Writer(s): Barunka O'Shaughnessy, Julia Davis
Producer(s): John Rushton
Main Cast
Julia Davis as Dorothy
Rosie Cavaliero as Hesther
Alexandra Roach as Helene
Rebekah Staton as Annie
Ben Bishop as Tom
Alex Macqueen as Edmund
Julian Barratt as Himself - Narrator
Rufus Jones as Dr. Foggerty
Daniel Lawrence Taylor as Geoff
