'Miss Scarlet' Season 6 Opens With a Reboot Filled With "Secrets & Lies"

If the fifth season of Miss Scarlet felt like a transition period, a kind of televisual gap year meant to help ease viewers into this brave new world of a new title, a different leading man, and functional amnesia about the previous seasons (sorry to the Duke, I guess), then the Season 6 premiere feels like a straight-up reboot. It’s apparent from the very top, with episode previouslies offering little context about Eliza Scarlet and her journey thus far beyond reiterating that she’s a great detective (and a reminder that Moses exists, so viewers won’t be surprised when Ansu Kabia returns to the show later this season). But “Secrets and Lies” draws a clear line between the world of the show that once was and the one we’re watching now, and it will be interesting to see how viewers respond to the show’s new status quo. 

Season 5 ended with Eliza finally deciding to open herself up to that nice Detective Alexander Blake, after being forced to confront the lonely state of her life in the wake of Ivy and Potts’s wedding. She headed ot his house with cake, they flirted, and it was a cute enough ending to the season, tentatively opening the door to a romance between the two in a way that felt both sweet and somewhat revealing about Eliza’s character at the same time. But the series’s sixth season begins with Blake and Eliza somehow already together romantically, which means that viewers missed out on all the bits that are some of the most entertaining in any new relationship — namely, how they got there. 

We didn’t actually see either of them admit their feelings for the other; we missed the pair’s first kiss and all the significant conversations that take place at the start of any relationship happened offscreen. Instead, Eliza and Blake are simply a couple now, suddenly stealing kisses in half-open doorways, having regular “private time” alone together off the clock, and already struggling to define what their relationship means in the real world. The pair (i.e., Eliza) has decided to keep their relationship a secret, afraid it’ll somehow damage her professional reputation to be dating Blake, so much so that she’s willing to take the (seemingly fairly substantial) financial hit of avoiding taking on Yard cases entirely.

(Until she isn’t, because there is basically no show if she stops.) 

On some level, this makes a certain kind of sense, given that Eliza turned down the Duke’s marriage proposal because she was afraid his promotion would mean she’d have to give up her own career. But how she decided it was better to sneak around (and impoverish herself) to be with Blake is a mystery, and the sort of significant emotional beat it probably would have been nice to see play out onscreen in some capacity. What is it about this man that makes him — and this relationship — worth the risk? But only to a point, apparently? Eliza has somehow come around to the idea that she can be with Blake as long as no one knows about it and the two don’t interact professionally. If this is supposed to be growth…it’s really not. 

True to form, “Secrets & Lies” contains an utterly forgettable case of the week that isn’t a murder so much as a pair of terrible accidents, involving two depressed women who suddenly turn up dead after taking the same medicine prescribed by the doctor they share. But the majority of the hour revolves around Eliza trying to work professionally with the man she’s dating without letting on that she’s dating him. It’s clumsy, awkward in a way that makes her look selfish and petulant more than anything else. One gets the feeling the show thinks this is supposed to be cute, but there’s a very frustrating one-step-forward, two-steps-back aspect to much of this. It feels like a mistake to start both a season and the show’s new marquee relationship this way. 

To their credit, Phillips and Durant Pritchard still have excellent chemistry with one another, and their flirting is genuinely charming. Sure, the show hasn’t bothered to give poor Blake much in the way of nuance; however, perhaps Eliza’s insistence on having things both ways in the relationship will finally be the catalyst the character needs to become something close to three-dimensional. (Of course, if his job is just to stand there and be handsome, well. He’s already killing it.)

Eliza and Alexander’s relationship status isn’t the only new element in Season 6. Both Tim Chipping’s Detective Phelps and Evan McCabe’s Detective Fitzroy are gone, transferred to new precincts offscreen. In their place is Detective George Willows (Sam Buchanan), a newcomer from Bow Street who is basically a puppy in human form. Like Blake, the character doesn’t initially read as terribly nuanced, but he has an intriguingly unorthodox home life (he lives with his sister and helps care for her baby; there is no sign of the child’s father as yet) that may spawn some unexpected stories down the road. Plus, he’s aggressively charming.

Willows immediately hits it off with spunky new clerical assistant Isabel Summers (Grace Hogg-Robinson) on their shared first day in the building, and their immediate sparkly chemistry is a balm to anyone mourning missing out on the honeymoon period of Blake and Eliza’s relationship. They’re adorable, is what I’m saying, and while it’s not like any of us know these characters that well, the prospect of their impending romance is probably enough to perk up most people watching this show for the romance, if only because it’s such an old-fashioned meet-cute. Everyone’s just interoffice dating at the Yard now, I guess!

In the end, “Secrets and Lies” sets up a season in which most of its focus seems as though it’ll be on Eliza and Blake’s relationship, as much as any of the cases they’re going to be asked to solve. Whether that’s a good decision — or whether the show’s really willing to go there in terms of exploring Eliza’s reluctance to tell anyone she’s actually in one — remains to be seen. 

Miss Scarlet Season 6 continues with new episodes airing and streaming on local PBS stations and the PBS app on Sundays at 8 p.m. ET through mid-February 2026. All episodes are available to stream on PBS Passport for members and on the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel.