UKTV – home of channels like Alibi and Drama – is a pretty good network if you’re struggling for a crime drama fix, and today it announced a brand-new, 11-part series that takes us back to the so-called Golden Age of crime fiction – the 1920s. Not only that, but Frankie Drake Mysteries introduces us to Toronto’s first ever all-female detective agency.
Frankie Drake Mysteries stars Lauren Lee Smith as Private Investigator Frankie Drake and Chantel Riley as Trudy, her associate at Drake Private Detectives. Guest stars include British actor Laurence Fox as Frankie’s confidante Greg Miller.
The Drake Private Detective Agency is Toronto’s only female private detective agency, where the team takes on the cases the police do not want. In a time of change, their gender is their biggest advantage as they defy expectations and rebel against convention. The Drake Private Detectives take on cases that explore neighbourhoods from gospel church choirs, the early cinema scene to private parties of the city’s elite. Frankie and Trudy’s fearless sense of adventure get them into all kinds of trouble, but they always manage to find a way out. They are new detectives for a new world – but is the world ready for them?
Frankie Drake Mysteries will air on UKTV channel Alibi in 2018, and the network enjoys a successful partnership with Canadian-based production company Shaftesbury, who make Murdoch Mysteries, another excellent Canada-based series set in the early 20th century. The channel also broadcasts Australian Golden Age-era drama Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries.
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