Arlington, VA – October 20, 2021 – This November, the PBS MASTERPIECE Prime Video Channel is bringing fans of every drama genre something new and exciting to binge. Included in the mix is the critically acclaimed period drama from MASTERPIECE, “Home Fires,” which follows two bitter rivals vying for control of the Women’s Institute in a rural English town during WWII. The all new Australian drama series “RFDS: Royal Flying Doctor Service” a gripping series taking place in Australia’s red heart, where the modern day heroes of the Royal Flying Doctor Service navigate private lives as turbulent as the heart-stopping emergencies they respond to. Among the many international Walter Presents programs that will be streaming on the channel is “The Defence, Season 2,” a Polish crime-thriller following an ambitious lawyer who works adamantly to prove her client’s innocence.
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.
Photo Credit: © ITV plc (ITV Global Entertainment Ltd.)
Masterpiece: Home Fires, Season 1 & 2
Streaming Date: November 7, 2021
Seasons: 2
Episodes: 12
Genre: Period Drama
Language: English
Critically acclaimed and based on the novel Jambusters, “Home Fires” opens in August 1939. War with Germany is all but certain, and the citizens of the isolated village of Great Paxford are each facing it in their own way. Men of fighting age are mostly enlisting or waiting to be called. Some of the women are joining the female military services; others already have essential jobs, such as farming; and still others are planning to “dig for victory,” planting gardens to reduce the need for food imports. Since German submarines will be attacking merchant ships, any task that adds to the nation’s self-sufficiency is vital.
Frances (Samantha Bond, Downton Abbey), whose husband owns a local factory, believes that the Women’s Institute has an important role to play. Joyce (Francesca Annis, Reckless), the longtime president of the institute, vehemently disagrees and proposes suspending activities until the war is over. So begins a quarrel that mirrors the fragmentation affecting the wider world. In Great Paxford, this crisis ends up cementing the friendships of a group of women who have their own personal troubles, but who now have a shared mission that will lead them to their finest hour.
RFDS: Royal Flying Doctor Service
Streaming Date: November 11, 2021
Episodes: 8
Genre: Drama
Language: English
Based on remarkable real-life stories and filmed on location in and around Broken Hill, this series captures the beauty and brutality of Australia’s vast center where doctors, nurses, pilots and support staff of the RFDS (Royal Flying Doctor Service) negotiate the unique challenges of emergency retrievals across some of the most inhospitable places in the country.
The series opens with a doctor escaping her past and joining the Royal Flying Doctor Service on a day in which a catastrophic emergency retrieval hits the team personally. Together they will deal with the fallout, while continuing their highly skilled work, fighting the clock and the elements to save people having the worst day of their lives. The question is, at what cost?
Walter Presents: The Defence, Season 2
Streaming Date: November 19, 2021
Episodes: 6
Genre: Drama, Crime, Thriller
Language: Polish with English Subtitles
The Polish series adapted from the renowned crime-thriller novel by Remigiusz Mróz, returns for a second season. “The Defence” follows the well-regarded, courageous and rebellious lawyer Joanna Chyłka as she fights for her clients till the bitter end. Season two sees Chyłka go head-to-head with murderers, gangsters, the police and even her own law firm.
After a double murder, Chyłka is assigned to defend the son of a well-known businessman, however he refuses to say a word… to anyone. How will Chyłka prove her client’s innocence if he won’t tell his side of the story?
Other titles coming to the PBS MASTERPIECE Prime Video Channer in November:
MASTERPIECE: Dark Angel
The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes Season 1&2
Walter Presents: A Different View
Walter Presents: Madame K
Walter Presents: Sisters 1968
Walter Presents: The Empress
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 operates five streaming channels —PBS MASTERPIECE, 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.
Follow PBS Distribution on Facebook and Twitter.
For Press inquiries, please contact Jill@jgoldsteinpr.com