‘A Very British Murder with Lucy Worsley’ Might Actually Give You Nightmares

We’re all a little obsessed with murder mysteries, aren’t we? We listen to true crime podcasts, obsess over the latest iteration of Sherlock Holmes, and binge Law & Order marathons. But where did our love of the macabre start? And who does it best?

In A Very British Murder with Lucy Worsley, the famed historian takes us through the evolution of Britain’s obsession with murder mysteries. She starts with a grisly real-life murder spree in 1811 and tracks how real-life murder mania gave way to a new form of storytelling. The three-part docu-series is lush, entertaining, and at times, truly horrifying. As charming as Worsley is, the real-life crimes she describes are so harrowing that you might have nightmares. (Okay, I did.)

The most interesting part of this series is how Lucy Worsley is able to connect the dots between the birth of the serial killer and the rise of real detectives to various trends in entertainment. She shows us how it was Charles Dickens’ time as a beat reporter, trailing Scotland Yard’s first detectives on their rounds, that helped inspire him as a novelist. She then is able to explain how the popularity of crime reporting gave birth to armchair detectives, which in turn sparked a need for a new kind of literary hero. Ironically, this relationship between the real and the entertaining is precisely what the new Netflix original The Frankenstein Chronicles is attempting. (I mean, Charles Dickens is even a “character.”) But Worsley’s series is based in actual fact, and the crimes she describes are all the more bone-chilling because they really happened.

Stream A Very British Murder with Lucy Worsley on BritBox