Jamestown: The Complete Season 3

The third and final season of this PBS-aired British period soap opera series takes its highly speculative story of the inner workings of the first permanent English settlement in the Americas up to 1622, concluding with the surprise assault on the colony by the Powhatan Indian Confederacy that would lead to strong English reprisals and the expansion of Virginia’s territory at the natives’ expense. Like the first two seasons, this one shuffles together a spate of interconnected plot threads involving Jamestown residents, including George Yeardley (Jason Flemyng), the colony’s governor, who tries brutally to expand his power; Jocelyn Woodbryg (Naomi Battrick)—a widow with ambitions to become a major landowner—and James Read (Matt Stokoe), the blacksmith she fancies; and Silas Sharrow (Stuart Martin), a colonial who has gone native and finds himself caught between two worlds. Meanwhile, Africans Pedro (Abubakar Salim) and Maria (Abiola Ogunbiyi) struggle with the reality of their condition as slaves, and new characters provide a couple of additional tangents: a recently-arrived boy who might be the son of tavern owner Meredith Rutter (Dean Lennox Kelly) challenges that ne’er-do-well’s dissolute lifestyle, while hunchback trader Willmus Crabtree (Ben Batt) proves to be a potential threat to both Yeardley’s power and Jocelyn’s hopes. Jamestown should not be confused with documented history, but it is certainly an amusing guilty pleasure. Compiling all eight episodes from the 2019 third and last season, this is recommended. (F. Swietek)