Episode 1

From the makers of Downton Abbey, this series follows the lives of three women as they wrestle with the challenges of creating a new life in a beautiful yet forbidding land. In the 17th century, on the edge of the breathtaking but untamed Virginian wilderness, sits the English colony of Jamestown. The settlement barely survived its first decade but is on the brink of change summoned by the arrival of a new governor, Yeardley, and 90 so-called “maids to make brides” — a bid from the presiding Virginia Company to establish the town as a prosperous place for all. Yeardley also brings with him a charter, granting land to the earliest settlers in reward for their loyalty, but new laws cause power struggles within the town and with the native inhabitants.