Masterpiece Mystery has a New Mystery!
Introducing Winter, starring Richard Armitage as a Bristol-based pathologist-turned sleuth
Featured image credit: Richard Armitage by Ray Burmiston; Annabel Scholey by Katherine Needles, from PBS | Masterpiece
Yes, Masterpiece Mystery fans! There’s a new one!
It sounds exactly like the kind of thing we like to see on Masterpiece, a British police procedural that follows a taciturn detective who solves difficult crimes.
It’s called Winter, and it stars Richard Armitage. He plays Dr. Ethan Winter, a cranky brilliant Bristol pathologist who winds up joining forces with a fastidious police investigator, DI Lauren Bell (Annabel Scholey).
But guess what? Winter has a secret! Yes! He’s secretly obsessed with solving the murder of a loved one, from his own haunted past.
This all sounds great. Perfect. My bingo card is full, which I like. Even better is that it’s is based on the French television series Balthazar, created by Clothilde Jamin and Clélia Constantine.
The series begins filming at the start of 2026, so hopefully, we’ll have Winter by next winter! I can wait. I’ll be good, I swear!
Olivia Rutigliano
Olivia Rutigliano is an Editor at Lit Hub and CrimeReads. Her other work appears in Vanity Fair, Vulture, Lapham's Quarterly, AirMail, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Public Books, The Baffler, Bright Wall/Dark Room, Politics/Letters, The Toast, Truly Adventurous, and elsewhere. She has a PhD from the departments of English/comparative literature and theatre at Columbia University, where she was the Marion E. Ponsford fellow. She hosts the podcasst "Culture Schlock" at Lit Hub Radio. She is on instagram at @oldebean, twitter at @oldrutigliano, and bluesky at @oliviarutigliano.bsky.social.
