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Jamaican-born author Sara Collins has joined the exclusive club of authors seeing their characters come to life with the television premiere of her first novel The Confessions of Frannie Langton. The new period drama premiered online via digital video subscription service BritBox on Wednesday, March 8.

Collins and Rock-blooded actress Karla-Simone Spence, who plays Frannie, have been busy doing the rounds promoting the series. On premiere day, the duo went live with The Washington Post, and have subsequently done interviews from the United States, Canada, South Africa, and Sweden as they commemorate the series’ international release.

The Confessions of Frannie Langton is one part murder mystery, one part historical drama, and one part queer romance. The story takes place in 1826 London with flashbacks to earlier in Jamaica, and follows Frannie Langton (Karla-Simone Spence) who is accused of murdering her former employer George Benham (Stephen Campbell Moore) and his wife Marguerite (Sophie Cookson), who was also Frannie’s lover.

The road towards producing the miniseries began in 2019, when Collins published her novel of the same name. At the time of publication, black British women protagonists were rare in historical fiction and even rarer in historical mystery novels. The novel was a best-seller on both sides of the Atlantic.