Joseph Nattrass (Jonas Armstrong) flirts with Mary Ann (Joanne Froggatt)īorn on Halloween day in 1832 in Low Moorsley, a small village just outside Sunderland in north east England, Mary Ann was the daughter of Michael Robson a colliery sinker (coal mine shaft construction and maintenance worker) who died in 1842 in a mine accident in Murton, Co Durham, when she was ten. It is estimated that Cotton poisoned with arsenic up to 21 people including: three of her four husbands, fifteen children, a lover, a friend, and her mother – collecting life insurance for many of them. Screenwriter Gwyneth Hughes had an extraordinary true-life story to draw from. “Why don’t you let me make you a nice cup of tea?” – Mary Ann Cotton What was Mary Ann Cotton’s story? What pushed her beyond despair and made her a mass murderer? Life in lower-class Victorian England was harsh and bleak, however, many wives and mothers did not become serial killers. My tipping point was my love of English history and my curiosity. ![]() The fact that it featured Froggatt, an awarding winning actress who I adored as Anna Bates in Downton Abbey, Emmy award winning director Brian Percival ( Downton Abbey) and acclaimed screenwriter Gwyneth Hughes ( Miss Austen Regrets) softened the blow a bit, but I was still not convinced. Multiple murders by a woman who successively kills her husbands and children by poison for their life insurance sounded like nails on a chalkboard to me – something way beyond my comfort zone. After reading the advance press on Dark Angel – the new period drama starring Joanne Froggatt as Victorian-era serial killer Mary Ann Cotton – I was seriously considering skipping my weekly MASTERPIECE appointment with my television.
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