• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, May 3, 2024

With a brand name like “Masterpiece,” expectations are high when new shows imported from the U.K. arrive in America on PBS.

“Masterpiece” has high standards when it comes to picking the shows it wants to air over here. But many of them, such as its quaint-village detective shows and urban police procedurals, reside pretty much on the same plane of quality as similar shows made here.

But the new one starting this Sunday -- “MaryLand” with a capital “L” -- fits into neither of those categories, although at its heart lies a mystery.

This three-part series is filmmaking on a human scale.

Here, the focus is on the relationship between two grown sisters -- Rosaline (Eve Best, above photo left) and Becca (Suranne Jones, right) -- and how their relationship evolves when their mother suddenly dies.

The mother’s name was Mary, as in “MaryLand,” but the show has nothing to do with the American state on the Chesapeake.

Here, the title refers to a very significant chunk of Mary’s life that was unknown to her two daughters until they learn of their mother’s death and then travel to the Isle of Man.

That is where her body was discovered one morning on a windswept beach on the Irish Sea.

This heretofore hidden “geography” of Mary’s life -- both literally and figuratively -- is the MaryLand of the title. 

To Becca and Rosaline, this particular “land” in which they have suddenly landed might as well be the surface of the moon.

In the process of stumbling around this alien landscape on the trail of the mystery that enshrouds their mother’s secret life, they get to know each other better. 

And they get to know their late mother better too, in ways that have the potential to change everything for each of them.

One of this show’s best qualities lies in the manner of its exposition. As griped about occasionally here, so many TV shows -- especially American ones -- explain their premises, situations and the traits of each character with tiresome narration or breathless, unnatural soliloquies by the characters themselves.

In “MaryLand,” almost nothing is actually explained in words. But we learn all we need to know at each stage of the show’s unfolding plot through a series of visual clues.

I have written it time and time again, paraphrasing no less a TV personage than the late Joe Franklin, who once told me: The word is television, you have to give them “vision.”

The other great trait of “MaryLand” is the acting skill of the two women at the center of the story, plus everybody else. 

Another thing I write from time to time: While American actors are great, British actors astonish. “MaryLand” is a case in point.

And speaking of “vision,” this show is a beautiful thing to watch -- from the exteriors of its homes and the design of their interiors to an outdoor landscape for which the word “picturesque” is inadequate.

“MaryLand” premieres on Sunday, May 5, at 9 p.m. Eastern on PBS.