Jamestown is a silly but gripping period drama – review
Jamestown(Sky1) is a new drama that goes back to the lives of the early 17th-century British settlers on the coast of Virginia. The lives of early settlers were unutterably miserable, marked by hardship, sickness, starvation and unappealing attitudes towards the natives whose lands they were appropriating. It’s the kind of grimness that, along with harsh strains of radical politics and religion, made Channel 4’s 2014 drama New Worlds a slog to watch.
But Jamestown didn’t concern itself so much with the practical downsides of being a pioneer. Its radicalism was wrapped up in an emotionally engaging storyline about three young women sent out to the colony, 12 years after its foundation in 1607, as wives-to-be paid for and imported by men they’d never clapped eyes on before.
It was a terrific idea for a story and the three – farm girl Alice (Sophie Rundle), streetwise Verity (Niamh Walsh) and posh bitch Jocelyn (Naomi Battrick) – had very different backgrounds and expectations. Bill Gallagher’s script hooked instantly because this was a world seen from a more psychologically real perspective than strict adherence to historical accuracy would allow.
The colony might be a mite mucky but the location was as pretty as an unspoilt beach resort. There was even room for a distinctly un-17th century strain of romantic optimism, allowing the handsome hunk Silas (Stuart Martin) to utter a prophetic speech about the beauty of America and the hope it represented for the world.
Alice was smitten, but it was Silas’s brutish brother Henry (Max Beesley) who had purchased her and, in a shocking scene, he raped her. The fate of Verity, betrothed to the town drunk, seemed hardly better, while Jocelyn instantly set about deploying her turbocharged social climbing skills among the higher echelons.
All of which was, strictly speaking, a little silly. But it was also gripping, and the cast’s enthusiasm was so palpable it was impossible to resist.
I, for one, want to know more about how these cleverly wrought characters progress with their challenging new lives in the New World.
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