STREAMING THIS JUNE ON THE PBS MASTERPIECE PRIME VIDEO CHANNEL:
“US,” STARRING TOM HOLLANDER AND SASKIA REEVES,
AND THE CRIME THRILLER “HALIFAX: RETRIBUTION” STARRING ANTHONY LAPAGLIA AND REBECCA GIBNEY
— Four New International Walter Presents titles, plus the WWII Drama, “Land Girls” Also Available —
Arlington, VA – May 17, 2021 – This June, fans of contemporary drama, crime thrillers and wartime dramas will have one destination to watch all their favorite genres – the PBS MASTERPIECE Prime Video Channel. Based on the bestselling novel by David Nicholls’, “Us” follows a hopelessly mismatched couple touring through Europe while trying to save their marriage, “Halifax: Retribution” sees Rebecca Gibney returning to her role as a female forensic psychiatrist who is asked to return to the police force in order to find the truth behind the most diabolical criminal minds, and all three seasons of the series “Land Girls,” follows the lives and loves of four women who have joined the Women’s Land Army during World War II. The new Walter Presents international series streaming on the channel in June are “King of the Skies,” “Inside,” “The Mountain Detective,” and “The Blood Pact, Season 3.”
The subscription rate for the PBS MASTERPIECE Prime Video Channel is $5.99/month with an Amazon Prime or Prime Video subscription. Every purchase helps support public television for all.
MASTERPIECE: Us
Premiere Date: June 20, 2021
Episodes: 4
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Language: English
Paris, Venice and Barcelona are on the itinerary when a married couple on the verge of breakup take a European vacation with their rebellious teenage son.
The story opens in suburban Britain, with Douglas and Connie twenty years into their marriage. He is a left-brain type — a scientist — organized, numerical, and obsessively rational. Meanwhile, she is an artist with her right brain firing on all cylinders—visual, creative, unconventional. Out of the blue one night, she wakes up Douglas to announce, “I’ve been thinking about leaving. I think our marriage might be over.”
It’s news to Douglas, who has been blindly contented with matrimony. He immediately decides to change his ways in order to change her mind. She agrees that they should at least go ahead with their planned European holiday, designed to introduce art-school-bound Albie to the glories of continental culture. At seventeen, he is not exactly thrilled to be doing the tourist beat with his parents.
Yet all three embark on a grand tour—three weeks, six countries, twelve cities—that is less about museums, monuments, and cafes than how family members can’t help driving each other over the edge. The contentious incidents abroad are interspersed with flashbacks to happier days, showing how Douglas and Connie met and fell in love, despite their differences. These scenes also reveal a long-ago tragedy that bonds the couple, and that has deeply affected Albie.
Halifax: Retribution
Premiere Date: June 1, 2021
Episodes: 8
Genre: Drama/Crime-Thriller
Language: English
“Halifax: Retribution” brings Jane Halifax back to the world she has never been able to leave: sleuthing her way to the truth behind the most diabolical criminal minds.
A string of random killings by a sniper prompts Commander Tom Saracen (LaPaglia) to contact an old colleague for help. Currently a professor of forensic psychiatry, it’s been almost 20 years since Jane Halifax (Gibney) worked with the police. As a celebrated academic, Jane’s life seems complete – her longtime partner Ben is a gifted musician and her daughter Zoe is living life to the fullest and following in Ben’s musical footsteps. Ben is opposed to Jane joining the task force, but Jane is tempted to return to the profiling life at which she excelled. After a traumatizing murder that shakes the whole family, Jane must confront a terrible possibility: that after 20 years, the worst of the criminals she helped put in prison are being released. As Jane is forced to go back into the files and nightmares of her past, will the murders be linked to the sniper, or to secrets from her past?
Walter Presents: King of the Skies
Premiere Date: June 11, 2021
Episodes: 8
Genre: Drama
Language: Dutch with English Subtitles
Based on true characters and events, “King of the Skies” is set during the early days of civil aviation and follows the battle between two men, Albert Plesman and Anthony Fokker from the end of the First World War in 1919 up until the beginning of World War II in 1939.
The men were completely different but needed each other to succeed. The director of the newly created Dutch airline KLM, Plesman was a straightforward, physically imposing, Calvinistic family man of simple descent who was happily married all his life to his wife Suze. An aircraft manufacturer and famous pilot, Fokker came from a wealthy family, was small in stature, and was a notorious playboy and womanizer who wasn’t a fan of rules. Although the men didn’t like each other they could not ignore one another: Plesman needed planes to keep KLM alive and Fokker needed a big customer to sell his planes to.
Over the years their battles were fought in several countries, during exciting, historic air races, and with an extensive cast of larger-than-life characters on both sides of the feud. At a crossroads in their lives the men are brought back together at the dawn of a new war, with one big question present: can they work together to stop the war?
Walter Presents: Inside
Premiere Date: June 18, 2021
Episodes: 6
Genre: Drama/Crime-Thriller
Language: French with English Subtitles
When a woman is found dead in a psychiatric clinic, the case is given to Angèle, a young police officer who has yet to work on her own investigation. But in order for her to solve the case she must get inside the clinic and question the patients. All of the suspects are mentally disturbed, yet they are endearing and funny. Angèle immerses herself in the case to the point where she starts feeling more comfortable around the patients rather than “normal” people. But in order to establish herself as a good detective she must solve her first big case and there are a lot of suspects. Who among the insane can we trust?
Land Girls, Seasons 1, 2 & 3
Premiere Date: June 18, 2021
Seasons: 3
Episodes: 15
Genre: Period Drama
Language: English
Created by Roland Moore, “Land Girls” follows the lives and loves of four women, Nancy, Joyce, Bea and Annie, away from home, doing their bit for Britain in the Women’s Land Army during World War II. Set on the Hoxley Manor estate against the backdrop of war-weary Britain in the 1940s, the series depicts how the women balance their working lives at the run-down pasture farm with the opulent living conditions at the estate. As they adapt to their new surroundings, and knuckle down to some hard work and play, they realize very quickly that their lives will never be the same again.
Walter Presents: The Mountain Detective
Premiere Date: June 25, 2021
Episodes: 9
Genre: Drama/Crime-Thriller
Language: French with English Subtitles
Driven by his need for freedom and fed-up with his violent daily life, former Marseille cop Alex Hugo chooses to leave the city and a violence he could no longer bear. While isolating himself in the mountains, he now occupies a position in the French ‘Police Rurale,’ enjoying a tranquility which he was previously unaccustomed to. Even in the peace and quiet of his new home, he soon discovers crime is everywhere humans are and the isolated mountains are no different.
In addition to the above, the other title that will be streaming on the
PBS MASTERPIECE Prime Video Channel this June is listed below:
Walter Presents: The Blood Pact, Season 3
About PBS MASTERPIECE Prime Video Channel
MASTERPIECE has been setting the standard for exceptional British drama in the US for 50 years and the PBS MASTERPIECE Prime Video Channel continues this legacy and has expanded to include award-winning TV series from around the world – all carefully curated for ‘viewers like you’.
About MASTERPIECE
Winner of 83 Primetime Emmys® and 18 Peabody Awards, MASTERPIECE has been essential Sunday night viewing for millions of fans since 1971. Susanne Simpson is the executive producer and Rebecca Eaton is the executive producer-at-large for the series. Funding for MASTERPIECE is provided by Viking and Raymond James with additional support from public television viewers and contributors to The MASTERPIECE Trust. Produced for PBS by GBH Boston, MASTERPIECE is known for hits such as All Creatures Great and Small, Sherlock, Downton Abbey and Victoria, and beloved classics such as Upstairs Downstairs, Prime Suspect, The Forsyte Saga and Poldark.
About WALTER PRESENTS
Walter Presents launched January 2016 in the U.K. as a video-on-demand service, founded by Jason Thorp, Walter Iuzzolino and Jo McGrath. Dedicated to showcasing award winning foreign language drama, the service is named after its curator, Walter Iuzzolino, a passionate drama fan. In March 2017, Walter Presents launched as an SVOD platform in the U.S., with the New York Times hailing it as a “chic TV boutique with a foreign accent.” Walter Presents launched in Italy September 2018, its first roll-out in mainland Europe, on Discovery’s Nove, Giallo and Dplay channels. In October 2018 Walter Presents partnered with PBS Distribution in the US, to make premium foreign language drama available on PBS Masterpiece on the Amazon Prime Video channel. Additionally, select top-tier titles chosen by PBS are also broadcast on PBS stations and streaming on PBS Passport, a digital member benefit available through local stations. In February 2019 Walter Presents increased its US distribution further launching on Comcast Xfinity X1 and later in June Walter Presents launched on the Roku Channel. In 2019 Walter Presents teamed up with Medialaan to make the service available to Flemish audiences on their newly launched digital channel StreamZ, and also joined forces with S4C to make its dramas available in Welsh. In 2020 we partnered with TVNZ with over 250 hours of content on their VOD service and also launched Walter Presents in Russia exclusively on Start, Russia’s fastest growing SVOD platform, providing 400 hours of hit international drama as well as launching with PBS Masterpiece in Canada. This year Walter Presents partnered with Australia’s largest subscription streaming service, Stan.
About PBS DISTRIBUTION
PBS Distribution is a leading distributor of public media content around the world, reaching audiences through multiple platforms and formats. The company, a joint venture of PBS and GBH Boston, operates six streaming channels — PBS Masterpiece (US and CA), PBS KIDS, PBS Living, PBS Documentaries and PBS America (U.K.). Other services include transactional video-on-demand, subscription video-on-demand licensing, physical products on DVD and Blu-ray, theatrical releasing, educational, non-theatrical, inflight, and international program sales and co-productions.
PBS Distribution offers consumers and educators the highest quality factual, scripted, and children’s programming including films from Ken Burns, hit series from MASTERPIECE and foreign language dramas from Walter Presents, entertaining and educational PBS KIDS series, and award-winning documentaries from NOVA, FRONTLINE, AMERICAN MASTERS, NATURE, AMERICAN EXPERIENCE, and many independent producers. For over 10 years, the company has extended the reach of programming beyond broadcast while generating revenue for the public television system, stations, and producers.
