Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Kate Phillips, Stuart Martin, Cathy Belton, Ansu Kabia, Ian Pirie, Evan McCabe, Tim Chipping, Laura Rollins, Aiden McArdle, Michael Simkins, Jessie Cave, Dominic Mafham, Emma Campbell-Jones, Tristan Sturrock, Elizabeth Bower, Jason Thorpe, David Bark-Jones, Dan Cede, Katie Brayben, Rosemary Boyle, Phill Langhorne, Richard James, Milan Nikitovic.

What might have been considered a quirky detective series set in Victorian England, one that had one series and would largely be forgotten, has in the space of a season, found a place where it has imprinted itself on the viewer, and whilst it is tucked away on a satellite channel to which many will not have access to, it nevertheless has grown in stature, in its pacing and story-telling, and it is thanks in part to the belief in the two main characters being given a finer perspective of the times and city they live in, that makes the second series a thought-provoking and at times dangerously enjoyable one to watch.

Miss Scarlet And The Duke cannot claim, nor does it need to, to be considered to be of the same value that might come with dramas that are thought of as cerebrally challenging, that is not its mantra, its intention or calling, its purpose is to show and call out the hypocrisy of the age, the hangover of a period of time in British history where stunted belief and egotism of one gender was produced by its ability to pay homage to a repressed grieving queen and yet offer little regard to her female subjects, often painting them as of little value, of either having to earn a living as a prostitute, or being wealthy enough thanks to well-placed marriages, to be seen in the world at large.

Consider how we are taught history, it’s a man’s world, from invention to thought, very few women are given their voice from that period, and those that are, for example Mary Shelley, Florence Nightingale, Charlotte Bronte, Mary Seacole, or Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, are painted subjectively as having been driven mad by their exploits, found to be wanting as their health deteriorated, or in many cases simply forgotten, on purpose, as to show that the era, and its following decades were more of man’s achievements than that of the women who changed what it meant to be heroines, what it meant to be alive, compassionate but wonderfully single-minded in delivering a lasting legacy for other women and men alike to hold up as a woman of substance.

Miss Scarlet And The Duke plays on that with a slight edge of tongue in cheek, the knowing smile, but presented with insight, with stamina, and fierce independence that gives Kate Phillips and Stuart Martin as the two eponymous characters, as well as Cathy Belton, Ansu Kabia, and Ian Pirie as the new chief Munro, a colourful base in which to kick on and continue the story of the female London Private Detective as she goes up against prejudice and discrimination of the Victorian era.

In a period where you were either at the very top but just a figurehead of the male dominated establishment or considered at the bottom of the pile of London’s, indeed Britain’s, social standing, to even be somewhere in the middle was to pave the way for others to fight the shackles of a chauvinism deeply rooted in an era riddled with bigotry and shame.

A series that has come on leaps on bounds, one that displays confidence in its second outing, and one that captures the intolerance of the Victorian period and its political and social hangover over a hundred and twenty years later.

Ian D. Hall