While October is a very busy month for PBS, we can understand if you want to get away from the wall-to-wall coverage of the 2024 U.S. Presidential election. PBS has a first-class news organization, but dealing with all of that drama can be exhausting. Sometimes, we just want to get our dose of British dramas from PBS and just let the rest sit for a while. In October, there’s only one new British show on the way, and it will be joined by a Spanish drama as well.
Our other pick from the three great PBS shows you should watch in October is an episode of Great Performances that will bring a powerful operatic musical right to your home. But if you want to see all of your options, you can always check the other new shows on PBS in October. You can even go back and revisit the great PBS shows to watch in September as well. But for the month of October, these are our recommendations.
When you’re done here, check out the best new movies to stream this week, as well as the best shows on Netflix, the best shows on Hulu, the best new shows on Max, the best shows on Amazon Prime Video, and the best shows on Disney+.
Velvet
Here’s a rarity for PBS: a Spanish drama premiering on Public Broadcast System instead of a British drama. Velvet was originally broadcast in Spain in 2014, and it ran for four seasons and 55 episodes. The story is set in Madrid in the late ’50s, when the Galerías Velvet was considered to be the one of the top fashion houses in the country.
Alberto Márquez Navarro (Miguel Ángel Silvestre) is the heir to that legacy, and he could have almost any woman that he wants. And yet the one woman who catches his eye and courts his heart is Ana Ribera López de Márquez (Paula Echevarría), a lowly seamstress at the Galerías Velvet. Like all love stories, this couple might need a few tries before they get everything right.
Watch Velvet on PBS.
Great Performances — Émigré
Are you up for a night at the opera? Or perhaps an oratorio is the correct term for Émigré, a 2023 drama set to music composed by Aaron Zigman with lyrics by Mark Campbell and Brock Walsh. This episode of Great Performances will feature Émigré with original cast members Arnold Livingston Geis and Matthew White as Josef and Otto Bader, a pair of Jewish brothers who flee from genocide in Nazi Germany to find sanctuary in Shanghai.
As the brother settle into their new lives, Josef meets and falls for a Chinese woman, Lina Song (Zhang Meigui), over the objections of Otto and her family as well. Josef and Lina only want to create a better world for each other and everyone else, but even their love may not be enough to keep their union together.
Watch Great Performances — Émigré on PBS on October 25.
The Marlow Murder Club
After debuting across the pond earlier this year, the British drama called The Marlow Murder Club is coming to America. Downton Abbey‘s Samantha Bond stars as Judith Potts, an older woman who joins her friends, Suzie Harris (Jo Martin) and Becks Starling (Cara Horgan), as they investigate a baffling series of murders in Marlow, Buckinghamshire.
DS Tanika Malik (Natalie Dew), the woman in charge of the police investigation, allows the women to serve as advisers on the case. But the more the trio learn about the murders, the less they make sense… especially when their initial suspect winds up dead. Is there a serial killer on the loose in their town? Or is the truth far more insidious?
Watch The Marlow Murder Club on PBS on October 27.