Watchable on BritBox, CTV, TVO March 6 to 12, 2023

SHOW OF THE WEEK: The Confessions of Frannie Langton (March 8, BritBox)

Period dramas are certainly not the overwhelmingly white entertainments they used to be, but it’s still rare to have one led by a Black female character.

(I can think of only a few off the top of my head: 2021’s “Anne Boleyn”; “The Long Song,” whose heroine was a Jamaican slave; and the upcoming “Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story.”)

So “The Confessions of Frannie Langton” is already atypical in that its focus is Frannie (Karla-Simone Spence), a former slave who becomes a servant to a white aristocrat and his wife in Georgian London when she is handed over to them by her previous owner. (It’s based on the award-winning novel by Sara Collins, who also wrote the show.)

Throw in the fact its plot is driven by a love story between two women and it’s definitely not your average costume drama.

Oh, and did I mention it’s also a murder mystery?

When we first meet Frannie, she’s being dragged out of the bed of her mistress, Marguerite (Sophie Cookson), accused of murdering both the woman and her husband, George Benham (Stephen Campbell Moore).

Did Frannie do it? She says not, but she also can’t remember what she did or didn’t do in her laudanum-induced state. In any event, it’s clear that even if innocent she’ll never get a fair trial in late 1820s London where, despite the abolition of the British slave trade in 1807, Black people are still regarded as less than human.

As the series builds to the trial it also teases out Frannie’s story: how she was separated from her mother as a child in Jamaica to live with John Langton (Stephen Mackintosh) and his wife; that she became an assistant to Langton, a sort of plantation Dr. Mengele, experimenting on slaves to prove the superiority of the white race.

Whatever else Frannie might have done, these are the memories that haunt her, and Benham is complicit in them as the person who funded Langton’s work while pretending innocence of what he was really up to.

But Frannie doesn’t see herself as a victim.

“The thing you need to understand is that I’m fed up with people like you deciding who I am or what I am as soon as you take one look at me,” she tells the lawyer representing her at trial, and her character could just as well be talking to the TV audience.

Frannie is intelligent, feisty, forthright and plays the system to her advantage as well as she can in her circumstances. But her Achilles heel is her love for Marguerite, who despite her whiteness has as little control over her circumstances as Frannie does.

The passion between the women is palpable and believable, and never portrayed lasciviously. But Marguerite is not an escape for Frannie; in her own way she’s as heedless of Frannie’s well-being as Benham and Langton, and her disregard hurts Frannie more.

This obliviousness is well portrayed in the story of Olaudah, a four-year-old slave boy whom Benham renames Laddie and gives to Marguerite as a distraction after a miscarriage. The couple eventually discards him and, when they encounter him again as an adult, played by Patrick Martins, he’s seething with resentment of them.

Olaudah has carved a niche for himself in white society as a boxer, as has Sal (the wonderful Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn), who runs a brothel that specializes in BDSM for its white customers and who is Frannie’s most steadfast friend.

Surprisingly, the series is only four episodes long, but it packs a lot into those episodes.

“Bridgerton” may have whetted our appetite for seeing characters of colour in period dramas; “The Confessions of Frannie Langton” satisfies with a portrayal of a Black lead character that is entertaining but also exposes the unsavoury realities behind the lovely period facades.

Shelved (March 6, CTV/CTV.ca)

Has there been a workplace comedy set in a library? Not to my memory but, in putting his in a Toronto library branch, creator Anthony Q. Farrell (“The Office,” “Secret Life of Boys”) has certainly hit on a location that’s reflective of the city.

“Shelved” takes place in a Parkdale branch of the fictional Metropolitan Public Library. People who don’t live in Toronto might not know that Parkdale has historically been home to low-income, marginalized communities, but the series quickly establishes that the Jameson branch has far fewer resources than outposts in wealthier neighbourhoods.

Cheerful, ever optimistic branch manager Wendy (Lyndie Greenwood, “Sleepy Hollow”) spends the pilot episode trying to replace Jameson’s computers, an essential resource for its clients that’s been missing for months. A couple of smirking employees drop off hardware even older than what she’s replacing while the oblivious facilities director suggests Jameson patrons bring their laptops and use the Wi-Fi.

Wendy eventually finds a solution thanks to Howard (Chris Sandiford, “What We Do in the Shadows”), who’s on a day transfer from the Midtown branch but soon becomes permanent — to his horror — thus solving another Jameson problem: understaffing.

The main cast is rounded out by Paul Braunstein (“Burden of Truth”) as assistant head Bryce and Dene actor Dakota Ray Hebert (“Run Woman Run”) as Jaq, keeper of the social media accounts and the feminist yin to Bryce’s anti-woke, right-wing yang.

Bryce quips to Howard that there are “a lot less gang fights” at Jameson than at his previous branch, but the vibe here is more sunny ways than mean streets.

Even the homeless patron, Unhoused Wendy (Robin Duke), looks rather well-kempt. She’s one of the few library users who gets a substantial amount of dialogue in the first two episodes, the only ones made available for review.

There’s also Sheila (Taylor Love), who comes in part-time to run the branch’s settlement desk and who quickly becomes a romantic interest for Howard.

Farrell has come up with an interesting concept, one that seems to have less bite and more sweetness than workplace comedies like “The Office.” We’ll see whether Canadian viewers want to take it on a long-term loan or just browse.

Short Takes

Furia (March 7, Viaplay)

I can already hear the cries of “What, more TV?” when I mention that there’s a new streaming service available in Canada. Described as “the leading producer of Nordic noir,” Viaplay launches here Tuesday and will be available via Apple TV, Android TV, Chromecast and other platforms. I was invited to sample the content ahead of the launch and watched a couple of episodes of Norwegian crime drama “Furia.” It starts with a cop from Oslo, Asgeir (Pal Sverre Hagen), moving to the picturesque small town of Vestvik with his seven-year-old daughter, hiding out from a Russian mob boss who wants him dead. But, as any consumer of crime drama knows, small towns aren’t necessarily all that bucolic, even ones with gorgeous mountain backdrops. What starts as the investigation of vandalism and arson at a refugee centre leads to a murder inquiry and the discovery of an alt-right cell in Vestvik that’s part of a larger terrorism plot. Asgeir, who’s apparently really bad at keeping a low profile, gets a little too close to the group as well as to Ragna (Ine Marie Wilmann), who blogs anti-Islam screeds under the pen name Furia. Ragna isn’t who she appears to be, however, and has a history with the Utoya massacre, a real-life attack in which a neo-Nazi killed 77 people, including 67 at a youth summer camp, in 2011. Also, if you watched Steven Van Zandt’s “Lilyhammer” you’ll recognize Fridtjov Saheim as Kjetil, one of the right-wing conspirators.

Category: Woman (March 8, 9 p.m., TVO/TVO.org)

If you’d like to experience some infuriation on International Women’s Day I recommend watching this documentary by Canadian filmmaker and former Olympian Phyllis Ellis. It lays out the long history of invasive gender testing of female athletes deemed too masculine by governing bodies like World Athletics, formerly known as the IAAF. It’s a practice that goes back decades in many sports, but Ellis focuses mainly on 21st-century runners of colour, like Caster Semenya of South Africa, Dutee Chand of India, Margaret Wambui of Kenya and Annet Negesa of Uganda, since the practice disproportionately affects Black and brown women. At the very least, careers have been ruined by the results of testosterone tests that, according to one doctor, are based on bad science. And then there are cases like Negesa’s. She was told she needed surgery to be able to compete so underwent the removal of her gonads as well as a partial clitoridectomy. It’s the kind of stuff you might expect to see fictionalized in “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Though she was told she could run again in just a few weeks, she was unable to compete again and sought asylum in Germany since the changes to her body meant her life would be in danger in Uganda. As athletes right activist Payoshni Mitra says, “When you are a man and you do exceptionally well you become a superman. When you are a woman and you do exceptionally well you must be a man.” Semenya lost a case at the Court of Arbitration for Sport against IAAF regulations that force women with high levels of testerone to reduce those levels to compete in certain events, but she has appealed to the European Court of Human Rights.

Odds and Ends

If you’re a fan of dark British crime drama “Luther” and its hero, troubled detective John Luther (Idris Elba), you’re going to watch the Netflix film “Luther: The Fallen Sun” (March 10) no matter what the theatrical reviews say. I know I will. Netflix also has MH370: The Plane That Disappeared (March 8), a docuseries about the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight 370 in 2014; Part 2 of the fourth season of “You” (March 9); and competition series “Outlast” (March 10), sort of an Alaskan “Survivor.”

“Perry Mason” is back for a second season (March 6, 9 p.m., HBO/Crave) and, based on the first episode, seems to be off to a promising start. In 1932 Los Angeles, Mason (a reliably good Matthew Rhys) is as restless as ever and, despite a vow to stick to civil law after last season’s Emily Dodson case, he and Della Street (Juliet Rylance) will soon get pulled into a murder case involving the rich son of an oil baron. Crave also has the HBO series “Rain Dogs” (March 6, 10 p.m.), about a working-class single mother and her daughter; and the original series “Disobey” (March 8), about the 1989 Chantale Daigle case, in which her ex-boyfriend sued her to prevent her from having an abortion.

On the subject of competition series, Paramount+ has “The Challenge: World Championship” (March 8), featuring top competitors from the American, British, Australian and Argentinian versions of the series participating in extreme physical activities to win $500,000.

Staying in the reality TV vein, if you’re a fan of “Big Brother Canada,” you probably don’t need me to tell you that Season 11 debuts March 8 at 9 p.m. on Global and STACKTV.

Disney+ has a number of things debuting this week, the most interesting of which for comedy fans is “History of the World: Part II” (Disney Star, March 6), an eight-episode followup to Mel Brooks’ 1981 film “History of the World: Part 1.” Also coming this week, the concert special “Miley Cyrus — Endless Summer Vacation” (March 10); the comedy-drama “UnPrisoned” (March 10), which stars Kerry Washington as a single mother and therapist who takes in her father (Delroy Lindo) when he’s released from jail; and the feel-good film “Chang Can Dunk” (March 10), about an unpopular Asian-American high school student (Bloom Li) who bets the school basketball star he can sink a ball by homecoming.

Prime Video’s latest is “Pendant ce temps en cuisine” (March 10), a docuseries that follows six Quebec chefs.

Acorn has “Holding” (March 6), which stars “Game of Thrones” vet Conleth Hill as a police sergeant in a small Irish town with a murder to solve. Charlene McKenna (“Bloodlands”) and Siobhan McSweeney (Sister Michael in “Derry Girls”) co-star.

With apologies to the publicist, I did not get time to check out “Bug Sex” (March 10, 9 p.m., CBC/CBC Gem), an episode of “The Nature of Things” about the reproductive habits of insects.

Finally, a couple of Oscar-related things. If you’re curious about “To Leslie,” the film that controversially earned Andrea Riseborough a Best Actress nomination, it’s on Super Channel Fuse on March 11. And the 95th Academy Awards themselves air March 12 at 8 p.m. on CTV.

NOTE: The listings here are in Eastern Standard Time and I’ve verified the times where possible, but it’s always best to check listings for your own area. The selection of programs reviewed reflects what I’m given access to by networks and streamers, whether reviews are embargoed, how many shows I have time to watch and my own personal taste. The Odds and Ends section includes shows that I have not watched.