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The second series of
Sky One period drama

Jamestown sees births,

marriages and deaths
take their toll on early
American settlers…

ky One’s surprise hit drama of
last year, Jamestown, followed a
trio of Englishwomen who’d
S taken a gamble on a perilous new
life in the New World. Based on the
real story of women purchased as
wives for the settlers of America’s
Jamestown colony, Jamestown’s
women arrived in 1619 to a
dangerous and hostile early America
run by men who, having been
deprived of female company for a
dozen years, had largely forgotten
how to treat them.
The drama, written by Lark Rise To A BRAVE NEW WORLD
Candleford’s Bill Gallagher, forsakes a
measure of historical accuracy – it’s
filmed outside Budapest,
Hungary, for starters – to that may be Henry’s. The conflict between Alice and Sophie Rundle as new mum Alice with
focus on the engaging While her status is Henry means divided loyalties for husband Silas Sharrow (Stuart Martin)
emotional struggles of the elevated as the first Silas. “I think for Silas that’s very hard and his brother Henry (Max Beesley)
three young English Jamestown woman to – it’s his brother, so he has loyalty she’ll do anything to influence
brides. They are Alice help create the next there, but it’s also his wife, so that is Jamestown’s politics.
Kett (Peaky Blinders’ generation of settlers, just a ticking timebomb,” continues “She’s had the rug pulled out from
Sophie Rundle), streetwise Alice’s emotional scars Sophie. “Alice was always very strong, under her feet, but she’s incredibly
Verity Bridges (Niamh Walsh) have not healed – the but now she’s a new mother, she has quick and ridiculously intelligent,”
and posh Jocelyn Woodbryg extended Sharrow family live this ferocity and this primal need to says Naomi Battrick. “She’s an
(Naomi Battrick). cheek by jowl, forcing Alice to live in protect her family. She’s biding her independent woman who wants to
The drama’s first series pulled no close proximity to her tormentor. time, but she’s just being pushed be involved in politics in a world
punches in depicting the brutality of Sophie explains that Alice’s rage and pushed.” where women aren’t allowed to, so
the settlers’ society. Kind-hearted towards Henry has not abated. “It Alice’s birth scenes are so dramatic she finds her own way.”
farm girl Alice was brutally raped by was very important to me that that that a stuntwoman was required to As for Verity, she’d eventually
Henry Sharrow (Max Beesley), the doesn’t go away, because it’s a brutal film them, and the actual birth takes found a way to rub along with her
husband who’d paid for her passage primal violation that we saw in place in freezing water. “It was like my husband, town drunk Meredith
and expected to marry her, episode one [of the last fourth or fifth birth scene in my (Shameless actor Dean Lennox
but she spurned his “ALICE WAS series], and not career,” says Sophie, adding with a Kelly). And this series she is eager
advances. Although something you laugh: “I don’t know what it is about for family life and longing to have
eventually she ALWAYS VERY STRONG, should minimise me that says, ‘Difficult birthing scene,’ a baby.
escaped Henry’s BUT NOW SHE’S A MOTHER, or trivialise,” but that was one of the hardest ones Jamestown depicts a historical era
clutches to marry she says. “He’s because it was in the water.” rarely covered in costume dramas
his brother, Silas SHE HAS THIS FEROCITY AND the spectre Alice is by no means the only through the prism of three engaging
(Stuart Martin), THIS PRIMAL NEED TO by the entire female settler facing hardship. Jocelyn women. “I think it’s indicative of
she’s haunted
PHOTOGRAPHS: SKY opens Alice faces PROTECT HER FAMILY” into play.” fortune early on, but is such a dramas and fleshed out female
as the second series
experiences a devastating reversal of
audiences’ desire to see female-led
time and that
determined character that she
protagonists,” adds Sophie.
further turmoil when
very much comes
SOPHIE RUNDLE
Vicki Power
bounces back. Her ambitions mean
she gives birth to a baby
SATURDAY MAGAZINE 15