Since
Downton Abbey concluded, many of the actresses on that period series have gone defiantly against type, embodying roles that are more modern, or less proper, or both. Tonight’s fact-based period drama,
Dark Angel, definitely does the latter, but goes back even further in time than the former. Set in the 1860s and 1870s, just after the American Civil War,
Dark Angel stars Joanne Froggatt – who played sweet, long-suffering Anna Bates in the downstairs part of
Downton Abbey – as Mary Ann Cotton, a real-life Victorian woman who was a serial killer far more prolific than Jack the Ripper, yet far more subtle. She committed more than a dozen murders, and perhaps as many as two dozen – but her weapon of choice was arsenic, like a real-life version of the sweet old homicidal ladies of
Arsenic and Old Lace. For a full review, see David Hinckley's All Along the Watchtower. Check local listings.