Have You Seen Jamestown Yet?

Have You Seen Jamestown Yet? The holidays are upon us, and since they will likely look a lot different for us all than in years past, we thought we’d share an amazing show on Netflix you can binge watch as you binge on holiday meals and treats with your immediate family. 

Jamestown really excites us because we are located smack in the heart of the Historic Triangle, at the very spot where English settlers arrived over 400 years ago to colonize the new world. This three-series program is about that time period in Jamestown, complete with soap-opera-like dramas that keep you coming back for more. Written by Bill Gallagher and produced by the same makers of Downton Abbey (!), Jamestown delivers on acting, storytelling, and incredible scenery. 

The first episode takes place in 1619, 12 years after the first men arrived from England and founded the colony of Jamestown in 1607. The first scene shows a ship dwarfed by a gigantic blue ocean. We soon discover that the ship is filled with women on their way to Jamestown from England, duty-bound to marry the men who have paid for their passage. This part is historically accurate; back then, marriage was a purely economic transaction, and in the early days of a mostly male-inhabited Jamestown, men were desperate for wives to guarantee a future for their floundering community. 

As you can imagine, back in England women weren’t too excited to hop on a ship and be delivered into the hands of a stranger in a strange land, especially considering the rumors of famine, disease and violence that raged across the colony. But the Virginia Company (a joint-stock company chartered by King James I in 1606 to establish a colony in North America) had to do something about the fact that a decade after its founding in 1607, Jamestown was mostly male and men were deserting the colony in big numbers. The colony had to be saved. The Virginia Company decided to sponsor working-class women with big incentives to leave England and go to Jamestown—a mail-order bride/modern-day bachelorette, if you will. Read more about it here if you’re interested!

Once the women arrive in Jamestown, we meet the three main female characters: Jocelyn, Alice and Verity, each betrothed to three very different men. The new governor, Sir George Yeardly, also arrives to begin the difficult business of governing a new colony. 

We hope you enjoyed getting the inside scoop from our, “Have You Seen Jamestown Yet?” blog. We won’t say any more, but if you like history, beautiful cinematography and great storytelling, you’ll find them in abundance with this series.