Fans of period drama and local history now have a reason to tune in to British television.
On Friday, the producers behind the hit series “Downton Abbey” released a new series about the creation of Jamestown. The show aired on Sky 1 in the U.K. – ahead of its U.S. release this fall. An air-date for the U.S. premiere not yet been finalized, according to a recent press release.
The television drama pivots around three fictional female leads, played by Naomi Battrick, Sophie Rundle and Niamh Walsh. They number among about 150 young women sent to Jamestown in 1619 to become planters’ wives, the release stated.
Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation President and CEO James Horn was a historical consultant on the series, providing counsel to ensure an accurate portrayal of the conditions in the early days of Jamestown.
“We can only imagine the bravery of the women who set sail for Jamestown and the unknown in these years,” Horn said in the release. “Without these courageous young women, the colony would not have survived.”
United Kingdom-based Carnival Films announced filming, most of which took place in Hungary on a set re-creating the James Fort, last spring.
“It’s been a very interesting process,” Horn said of his work with the production team, during an interview with WYDaily last May. “They really want to make it historically accurate, but of course it’s not a documentary, it’s a drama.”
Horn was approached about the show in 2014, after Sue de Beauvoir, the producer, read his book, “A Land As God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America.”
While the series is based on historical events that took place in Virginia in 1619 and subsequent years, the show is an interpretive drama and not a documentary of actual events.
“It’s certainly a goldmine from a storyteller’s point of view,” read a review of the show published in the Guardian. “There are all sorts of horrors here – the birth of the British empire and of modern America, war and slavery just round the corner. It’s an almost endless [stream] of stories, and the three recent arrivals, each with their own horrors and journeys, are a good route in.”
WYDaily archives were used in this article.
