Look at it this way…there will be always be another Sunday night NFL football game next week, there are no Major League Baseball playoff games tonight, the NBA season doesn’t begin until the end of this month and there are still 80+ hockey games for your local team left in the regular season before the playoffs so you have absolutely no reason not to tune into your local PBS station tonight and feast of three of the best take-charge female detectives to grace the small screen.

Miss Scarlet and The Duke S2

Kate Phillips as Eliza Scarlet and Stuart Martin as William Wellington. Photo: Courtesy of Masterpiece/PBS

Kate Phillips (Peaky Blinders) returns tonight at 8:00pET/7:00pCT as Eliza Scarlet for the series 2 premiere if Miss Scarlet and The Duke. Stuart Martin (Jamestown) returns as Scotland Yard Detective Inspector William Wellington, a.k.a. The Duke, Eliza’s childhood friend, professional colleague and potential love interest.

Season 2 begins several months after the conclusion of season 1 which finds Eliza have solved her father’s murder but still facing the challenges being the first female private detective in a male-dominated Victorian London.

Magpie Murders

Lesley Manville in Magpie Murders. Photo: PBS Masterpiece

Premiering tonight at 9:00p ET/8:00pCT and adapted from Anthony Horowitz’s (Foyle’s War, Midsomer Murders) best-selling mystery-with-a-mystery novel, Magpie Murders, stars Lesley Manville (Mum, World on Fire, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris) as editor turned amateur sleuth Susan Ryeland and Tim McMullan (Patrick Melrose, Foyle’s War) as world-famous detective Atticus Pünd.

Susan Ryeland receives the long-awaited mystery manuscript featuring her prima donna author’s famous detective, Atticus Pünd. When Susan attempts to find the missing final chapters, she’s plunged into a shocking mystery of her own bouncing the viewer between the cozy 1950s village life of the manuscript and present-day London bustling with commerce and ambition.

Annika

Nicola Walker in Annika. Photo: PBS Masterpiece

Nicola Walker (MI5, Unforgotten, Last Tango in Halifax) stars as DI Annika Strandhed, the speedboat-driving head of Glasgow’s newly-formed Marine Homicide Unit, who juggles baffling cases and a rebellious teenage daughter.

Walker is joined by Jamie Sives (Guilt) as DS Michael McAndrews, Annika’s old colleague; Katie Leung (Harry Potter, Roadkill) as DC Blair Ferguson, the forensic brains behind the unit; and Ukweli Roach (Grantchester) as DS Tyrone Clarke, the new cop at the station.

Aside from this being another brilliant series with Nicola Walker at the helm, pay close attention to “Annika” as she ‘breaks the fourth wall’ to confide droll musings directly to viewers throughout the series.

Watch your local PBS station tonight (KERA in North Texas) from 8-11pET/7-10CT and then you’ll have your Sunday nights through November booked with three of the best mysteries on television.

In: Mystery

Related posts:

‘Foyle’s War’ creator, Anthony Horowitz, adapts ‘Magpie Murders’ for PBS Masterpiece ‘Annika’ sets Oct 15 premiere date for S2 on PBS Masterpiece First look at ‘Annika’ S2 headed our way in 2023 on Masterpiece!