By Morgan Cormack

Published: Wednesday, 14 December 2022 at 12:00 am

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The Confessions of Frannie Langton is just one of the stellar new dramas that has landed on new streaming service ITVX. The four-part series is led by Karla-Simone Spence (Blue Story, Wannabe) in the role of Frannie Langton, our young protagonist born into a life of slavery, who is fighting to tell her own story.

Set in the 1800s, the series takes viewers on a journey from a Jamaican plantation to the opulence of Georgian London, where Frannie is employed as a maid in the home of celebrated scientist George Benham (Stephen Campbell Moore) and his wife, Madame Marguerite Benham (Sophie Cookson).

But as well as being a period drama, it’s one that is full of epic twists and turns. When the Benhams are found murdered in their beds, all eyes turn to Frannie who is found covered in blood sleeping next to her mistress, Madame Benham. What unfolds is a tale of illicit love, survival and a mission to figure out the truth.

Having premiered on ITVX on Thursday 8th December, viewers have been quick to remark how authentic and gripping the new drama is. But is The Confessions of Frannie Langton based on a true story? What is the inspiration behind the new period drama? Read on to find out.

Is The Confessions of Frannie Langton based on a true story?

While the events that unfold in the new ITVX drama veer as close to historical accuracy as possible, the series is based on the novel of the same name by Sara Collins.

Collins’s debut novel was released in 2019 and like the series, the events of the book pick up in 1826 when Frannie is standing trial for the Benham’s murders. As well as scooping up the Costa Book Awards First Novel prize in 2019, the book has been revered by publications and writers alike. Margaret Atwood, writer of The Handmaid’s Tale, even stated that it was “Wide Sargasso Sea meets Alias Grace … deep-diving, elegant.”

Speaking about the decision to adapt her novel for the small screen, Collins admits: “I knew straightaway that I didn’t want to write yet another period drama where the only thing that happens to the Black characters is slavery.”

While the events in the series and novel are fictional, they’re born out of a real-life desire to see and read about authentic and multifaceted Black characters in historical fiction. Collins continues: “My life-long irritation with the depiction of Black characters in historical fiction as nothing but victims of that institution was the reason I’d written the novel in the first place.

“But I also wanted to avoid the sort of colour-blind fantasy about interracial romance that seems to be in vogue nowadays – deliciously anachronistic, but occasionally guilty of indulging the audience’s self-serving reasons for pretending slavery never happened at all. Instead, I wanted to dramatise a passionate love affair between a Black woman and her white mistress in Regency London.

“We’ve been led to assume this kind of thing would never have happened, which is precisely why it’s the story I wanted to tell.”

Of course, the depiction of slavery – including the depiction of brutal experiments on her enslaved peers – is based on real history. But it is also a drama that isn’t your “typical” tale about slavery, as Frannie herself states to the viewer at the start of the series: “No doubt you’ll be thinking that this is just another one of those slave stories, all sugared over with misery and despair.”