Lucy Worsley walks into archives, prisons and palaces, opens long-shut boxes and reads the words nobody bothered to read before. Each of the eight films picks a single flashpoint, the Black Death, the Gunpowder Plot, the witch hunts, the madness of King George, and stages it like a crime scene, complete with costumed witnesses, hidden cameras and a barrister’s eye for contradiction. She is both presenter and prosecutor, never content with the textbook version.
The production keeps the present in shot: fluorescent archive lights flicker, rain streaks the car window on the way to a castle, Worsley’s biker boots crunch across gravel. Dramatic sequences are stripped of glamour; actors speak the actual trial transcripts while standing in the original courtyards or plague pits. The camera lingers on her gloved finger underlining a 400-year-old confession, then cuts to a modern-day descendant hearing the sentence their ancestor escaped.
Ratings hold steady above 2 million on BBC Two and the series quickly becomes PBS’s most-streamed British history strand in the States, green-lighting a second season before the first has finished airing. A third season, already funded, will tackle the Great Fire, the Titanic inquiry and the Profumo affair.
Production Details
PBS / 2 Seasons / 8 Episodes / 2022 - Present
Showrunner(s): Lucie Ridout
Cinematography: Carlo D'Alessandro, Mike Robinson
Main Cast
Lucy Worsley as Self - Presenter
Patrick Capaloff-Fowler as Beefeater
Brian Stobie as Thomas Moore / Miles Forest
Gez Disney as John Digton
Caz Paul as Robert
Graham McEwan as Cleric
David Montgomery as Witch-pricker
Jack Daynes as Guard
Ian Stevenson as William Cranmer
Ryan Pirie as King James VI
Kel McNaught as Prince Edward
Jacob Watson as Prince Richard
