new to itv but been shown on ITVX
4 part drama mon to thur
im not usually a lover of historical dramas so not sure if will like /watch more then E1 of this but a friend who has ITVX says it’s good so will see …..,
The Confessions of Frannie Langton, an adaptation of Sara Collins’ 2019 novel of the same name, tells the tragic story of a former slave who is sent from Jamaica to London and ends up working for a wealthy couple, where she falls in love with her mistress.
Set in Georgian London, the show is a beautiful, painful and queer story. It’s a British period drama which puts a Black woman at the helm – while defying the stereotypical former slave figure often painted in period dramas. Frannie (Karla-Simone Spence) is educated, well-read and outspoken, but more importantly, she has the ability to fall in love.
When we meet Frannie , she is being dragged from her lover’s bed and arrested for the murder of the Benhams – her master and mistress (Stephen Campbell Moore (https://www.denofgeek.com/war-of-the-worlds/) and Sophie Cookson).
Over the course of four episodes, and as Frannie pleads that she is not responsible for their murder, we get to see Frannie’s life through flashbacks which hit us with the brutal force of reality for Black people in the Georgian era.
It tests our knowledge of the British Empire and what we may have thought we knew about Black Britain at the time.
Frannie’s narrative is told in two timelines, one as she sits in jail trying to remember the events that led to her masters’ murder and the other as she gives us a look into her past: her childhood on the Paradise plantation in Jamaica, her arrival to England and how she ended up being accused of murder.
The historical aspect makes this show even more intriguing as Frannie’s story depicts how there were loopholes involved in the slave trade being abolished, which allowed slaves already working for families to continue working for them without pay.